


Ned's girls

by Zeta_Mei



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A modest homage to Dame Angela Lansbury, And becomes one of Ned's girls, Brienne answers to a lonely-hearts ad, Cersei sings in that saloon :(, Cowboy Hats, Dresses, First Kiss, Forgive Me, Guns, Jaime has a saloon!, Light Angst, Major Character Injury, Snakes, Too many GIFs, Wild West AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 38,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27046576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeta_Mei/pseuds/Zeta_Mei
Summary: In occasion of Dame Angela Lansbury’s birthday……let me introduce you Brienne and Jaime in the (silly) remake of her 1946 “Gay and Lusty Musical Romance” movie The Harvey Girls……where the Westernlands are the Frontier, Cersei is not Jaime’s twin but only the gorgeous star of his saloon (and, OMG, she’s not even that bad), and, of course, Brienne can shoot better than Judy Garland but she’s still a romantic girl who makes 2000 miles to answer to a lonely-hearts ad.Guess who has (really) written that blessed ad.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Taena Merryweather/Margaery Tyrell, Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister & Jon Snow, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Robb Stark/Jeyne Westerling, Satin Flowers & Brienne of Tarth, Satin Flowers/Jon Snow, Theon Greyjoy/Jeyne Poole
Comments: 109
Kudos: 96





	1. Chapter 1

__

_‘Next stop Silverhill, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty minutes to Silverhill.’_

The train runs at such a speed that she feels dizzy. Forty miles an hour, fields and lands blurring swiftly behind the window glasses and all she has to shield herself from the unknown is a ribbon wrapping a dozen letters. A paper and silk armor, every word whispered and learnt by heart, in the close of her chamber, as if Brienne has wanted to chisel them on her skin. He will be gallant, and sweet, like those words – a true gentleman, and a true gentleman will never reject her because of a few freckles. And a mouth too large. And a nose and a body that would have fit a boxeur, instead of a bride. Brienne lets her head fall back on the cushioned seat. 

“Hey, everything’s ok with you?”

Brienne widens her eyes and see a very pretty girl, brown curls so harmoniously combed and soft-doe eyes, glancing at her, a line of concern signing her porcelain brow.

“I’m fine, thanks. Just a bit confused,” she answers, hiding instinctively her hands too big and rough in her pockets, and a cold shiver crawls up her spine, as she realizes that her betrothed might be waiting for a girl wearing a gown, maybe a plain, comfortable travel dress, but still a dress - not a jacket and worn pair of trousers. 

“Don’t think she’s fine, Margaery”, says another willowy gal, maybe the sister or the cousin of the first girl, seeing the resemblance, leaning on Brienne. “She’s as pale as Alla when she has to meet granny Olenna. I’ll bet she’s going to faint.”

“I’m not going to faint,” Brienne feebly protests, and Margaery shakes her lovely curls, and sits on the armrest of the place in front of her. “No one is going to faint, Elinor, not with Ned’s girls coming in his help,” Take a sip of this one, sweetheart.”

The liquor goes down her throat and burn whatever it touches. Brienne coughs, but feels better, and smiles back to the two girls.

“Wildfire is never disappointing. The contrary of men”, chuckles the kind girl. “So, I’m Margaery, this is my cousin Elinor, and over there you can see the rest of the family, Alla and Megga, with our friends Meredyth, Taena, Alysanne and Alyce. Loyal Septas Nysterica has followed us. We’re all brave pioneers, ready to conquer the wild, wild west, beginning form Silverhill.” Pioneers. Margaery and her kin seem just ready for a tea party, with their chiffon dresses and tiny voile parasols, but, who’s Brienne to judge how a real pioneer looks like? She has never left Tarth, if not for some holidays in the Baratheon estate in Storm’s End and some pleasant sea travels with her father. Her father, Selwyn Tarth, the king of marble. She hopes only that he will understand, one day. “We’re from Highgarden and we just want to experience a few adventures before settling”, Margaery interrupts herself only to nod at plump-cheeked Megga, “Well, my cousin, here, wants just to settle with a wild westernman in truth. What about you, sweetheart?” 

“I’m Brienne, and I’m going to Silverhill, me too,” she replies, quietly. Almost dreamily.

“Are you another of Ned’s girls? That would be so nice,” shouts a very short girl, same curls, but with a spark of red in her hair. Alla, if Brienne recalls well.

“Ned’s girls? What’s that, a college?”, Brienne asks.

“College? Noooo, waitresses”, replies loudly Megga, seeming very shocked by Brienne’s assumption, “in one of Ned’s restaurants. Ned Stark, do you know him? Of course, you know him, everybody knows Ned’s system that _neither demands or expects_ …”

“… _the impossible from any employee, it does insist upon honest, excellent, hygienic, cleanly, prompt and cheerful service at all times_.” Margaery concludes and pats on Brienne’s leg, “Another way, the most savoury, to colonize the westernlands, and get some pocket money for girls of good family. So, Brienne, why are you going to Silverhill? Is that your home?”

“No.”

“Are you going to visit someone?”, another brown-haired girl peeks out from behind Megga’s thick braid.

“No.”

“Going for work at the local school?

“No.”

“To found a new religion?”

“No.”

“So, what?”

“I’m going to marry a man,” she confesses, becoming red as the rose on Alla’s hat.

“A man, she said, not a boy. Interesting,” Margaery’s grin is adorable, her teeth are perfect, and white, like little pearls. “What’s his name?” 

“His name is Mr. L. S. Crakehall.”

“Is he tall? He must be.”

“Handsome?”

“Rich?”

“Clever?”, asks Margaery, last.

“I-I’ve never met him, to be honest. I answered a matrimonial ad in the paper. One of those papers who don’t require you to send a picture…and the ad was, well, touching.” Touching. Touching isn’t a good word to define it. A message inn a bottle, adrift. Loneliness and hope changed into ink, and the ardent core of Brienne had recognized them, and pulled her to answer, in spite of Red Ronnet or any other of her failures…

“Well, really? I think it’s wonderful,” replies Megga. “So romantic. Can I see your wedding dress? Mine is embroidered with lilies…”

“I’m afraid I’m not fit for a wedding dress.” Brienne looks down, swallowing, and hardly believes that it’s really happening to her. But Megga’s right, it’s wonderful, the man who wrote the letters she jealously keeps in her trunk is wonderful, and she has not to be afraid at the idea of meeting him, and why not, kissing him at the station, and spending the rest of her life with him.

“Dresses aren’t important. Intentions are. Did he write you back long and fond letters, didn’t he?”, murmurs Margaery.

Brienne nods, her cheeks still aflame. _There’s a dream here, in this great land, green and gold, that not everybody sees. Mountains and sunlight, and the cleanest wind in the world, waiting for a man and his woman… A woman with sincere eyes, and fingers mild and fragrant like a breeze, through my hair…_

_‘Silverhill, ladies and gentleman. Silverhill…’_

Brienne jumps on her feet, and feels a squeeze on her arm. It’s not him, not already, it’s simply Margaery.

“Don’t be afraid, Brie. Your love is waiting on the dock, if you want him, just go and get him.”

Go. Get. Him.

Ok.


	2. Chapter 2

“Fuck, if she’s freakishly beautiful,” Bronn says, admiring the singer’s perfectly shaped body, wrapped in a gorgeous dress of golden silk, his greedy gaze lingering from Cersei’s sculptured bosom to her thin waist, just accentuated by a waterfall of embroideries glittering red and green, asymmetrical, on one of her thighs and down, till the long train of taffeta and ostrich feathers.

Jaime lets his fingers caressing the edge of the glass, and lets his ears ignoring the dark-haired cutthroat’s words, completely. It’s a sane habit to ignore Bronn – just another of the lovely pets that his beloved brother has left behind, before selling himself to the enemy for a couple of pretty blue eyes.

“That’s a good number, Cersei”, he merely says, grinning, as soon as the last note vanishes in the hall of the saloon, with its statues of fake marble sculptured in the manner of Lys, the pretentious carpets of red velvet copying the Myrish style, the mirrors, the piano, the round tables of cherry and oak, everything there promises luxury and lust, and everything’s a lie. No man in Silverhill can afford the lavish tastes of Miss Cersei Lannys, but at least the most of the costumers can pay good dragons for a very good whiskey, a few songs and no more… entertainment and alcohols being the only true things left in the city, or at least, in the Golden Hand Saloon.

“Only the number is good?”, flirts Cersei, the hint of a smile on her mouth impossibly red with lipstick, the giant emeralds of her necklace and earrings playing with the light, very green and very suspicious, like the brightness in her eyes. She’s effectively beautiful, slightly enchanting, like a snake spiralling among the grass.

"Cersei, please." Jaime warns her, before turning to the skinny boy at the piano. "Well done, Pod. Your arrangement is amazing."

The boy enjoys composing and studying boots, or so it seems to Jaime. "It's Miss Cersei's voice that puts the costumers over," he answers, never lifting his glance from the carpet. 

"My voice?", she grins. "He's so young."

"Definitely young, Cersei. Try not to corrupt him too quick, I find him so funny." Bronn breaks in, and the woman frowns at him, as if she has never welcomed him in her bed. In the end, Bronn remains one of the wealthiest men of Silverhill, and for what merits? Tyrion should have known, but Jaime prefers not to know, nor imagine what the wolfish man wants from him, right now. "Time to talk, Lannister. I haven’t come here to clean the wax from my ears with Cersei's shrieks. Guess who’s arriving in town? A bunch of damned Ned’s girls.”

“Is the dwarf coming, too?” The scorn in Cersei’s voice is unbearable.

“His name’s Tyrion, and he’s still my brother, darling. Never forget it.” Jaime hisses, and she reaches the bar and leans on it like an annoyed goddess, glimmering among a crowd of magpies and sparrows in adoration.

Unluckily, Tyrion’s left-over isn’t done with him. “Yeah, your little bro, so little, yet cunning. How many times the fucking Starks tried to trespass the frontier with their odd ideas of order and justice, and failed, miserably.” Bronn spits on the wooden floor. “But it’s Tyrion who had the bravery of creating a chain of restaurants in every station post from coast to coast, it’s Tyrion’s who had the intuition of filling any damned Stark restaurant with pleasant waitresses, young and flirty, but still the very portrait of the good girl next door. And now, while your brother is enjoying his honeymoon in the sapphire waters of Tarth with his brunette, his new good-brother Robb Stark is opening a restaurant just in front of your saloon. Next, a Sept will open soon, and ruin everything.”

“Oh, Bronn, you’re really losing your grip,” Jaime smirks, “Afraid of a Sept and of a place that sells vittles.”

“Vittles and a pack of calf-faced girls, Lannister. Those girls can fill up a town faster than law officers, mark my word.”

“And you mark mine, scum. This saloon is mine, and we’re not partners. You’ll get the usual cut, as my brother promised you, but no more than that. Now leave, I’ve friends to welcome” Bronn’s eyes sparkle with derision, but he’s clever enough to leave without objections, knowing that Jaime is fast with his guns, faster than him, for sure. One day, it will end badly between them, but not today.

Today is a great day, in truth.

The day of Strongboar’s wedding, and when Jaime finally spots Addam yanking and pulling Lyle inside the saloon, huge and a bit ridiculous in a new pretty-boy dress, well, Bronn, Tyrion and the Starks are gladly forgotten. 

“Hey, lucky man”, he shouts to Strongboar, and he’s not lying. His friend is really lucky, the wench who has sent those letters is loyal and kindhearted, a bit strong-headed, maybe, but the Westerlands need strong women, in the end. “The house will buy you a drink, to start the celebrations. Let the bottle, Raynald.”

Strongboar rushes to empty his glass, and Jaime follows the broom, quickly, squeezing his eyes as the pleasant fire gallops down his throat, not helping to untie the knot strangling him since the early morning, who knows why. Maybe another one of those stupid dreams that he doesn’t remember in the daylight.

Not that Lyle seems so happier than him. “Help me Jaime, please. I can’t.”

“For Gods’ sake, Jaime, do help him, and help my poor ears, too,” Addam shakes his head, and his smile is less cocky than usual. “It’s just the so-called altar panic, nothing of serious, Lyle, your bride’s coming with the next train, and she has made more or less 2000 miles to come and wed you, so you’re not going to spurn her, even if she probably weighs 200 pounds.”

“200 pounds? Then maybe she’s a good cook. I’d like a bit of flesh, and also some good cooking,” Lyle replies, sniffling, then his face drops again and he let it fall on the bar’s surface with a very loud _thud_. Twice. Thrice. “I can’t, I can’t wed.”

“Hey, hey, you can’t threaten to crash the costly furniture of my saloon with your thick-head, only because you’re scared by a woman armed only of a wedding dress.” Jaime forces Lyle to lift his chin, and starts damping his cheeks with a soaked handkerchief, wasting such a vintage arbor gold for the task. Lyle remains ugly as usual, however, and his cheeks are still horridly splotched with red, but at least Jaime has managed to comb the groom’s wild black beard. More or less. It’s a luck that the wench on the train is surely not a shallow one. “Come on, Lyle Crakehall, you’re one of the strongest men I know, you’ve got a pretty ranch, you’ve always longed for settling and having a million children, haven’t you?”

“I wanna marry, I wanna a nice, soft woman who likes me for what I am, but I can’t marry a woman I’ve never met.”

“Strongboar, you know her, you have written her, how many times, ten, or even more?”

“Twelve. He sent twelve letters”, murmurs Jaime, trafficking with his tie. It’s really a weird day, today. 

Lyle turns abruptly, a lamp lighting in his dull head. “I sent them, but it was you to write the ad, and then the letters, for me. It was you to court her on paper. You do know her, Jaime, you should wed her, not me.”

Jaime curses, as Addam’s elbow hits him right in the stomach, that was already aching for that damned arbor gold. “What was the name on the letters?”, he manages to growl, glaring at the copper-haired man to whom is now in debt. “Jaime fucking Lannister? No, it was Lyle fucking Crakehall, and you’re not going to let the future Mrs. Crakehall wait for you at the station.”

He and Addam drag a shaking boar to the near station, just in time to see the arrival of the train. Clouds of steam, flying hats, cheers and a lot of pretty young faces peeking out the open windows.

“See, Lyle? So many good-looking gals, and one has come just for you. Just for you,” Jaime hears Addam say, among the sudden turmoil and the clattering, the wicked song of the giant iron wheels, eating the rail track. It’s all a mess of dust, smell of sweat and iron, and the noise is unbearable, there are too many faces, all of them smiling out of the windows, eyes shining with excitement, except two.

Two wide, frightened eyes.

A heartbeat, and they’re gone, in a flash of startling blue.

Jaime has enough of all that confusion, and seeing that Strongboar is ok with Addam, he decides to go back to his business. He doesn’t need to meet the wench who’s going to marry Lyle, not now, and definitely he doesn’t want to meet any blue-eyed wench – blue eyes are the worst threat for the Lannister legacy, just ask the cleaned-up wolf pup that Sansa Stark has pulled out from his wretched brother. 


	3. Chapter 3

A gust of wind makes Taena’s purple gown swirl, as she climbs down, then it’s up to Alla and Alyce. Taena laughs, the deep and sensual laugh of a woman grown, while the girls giggle, all together, quickly gathering again around Margaery like ladies-in-waiting in adoration of their pocket queen, beautiful in her pale blue dress lined with white lace. 

“Oh, I suppose that’s Mr. Robb Stark, the one with the panama and the checked suit”, Margaery says, looking at her right, and the tiny candid blossoms lying on the yellow ruffled chiffon of her hat start tremble at the slight movement of her lovely face. “He does look as his sister Sansa, that I met at the debutante ball, In King’s Landing.”

“And the one with the pink tie must be his partner, the heir of Mr. Balon Greyjoy,” adds Taena, fluttering her long, jet-black eyelashes, and putting a little, gloved hand on her thin waist. 

A man of about Brienne’s age is effectively coming forward them, his elegant hat in his hand, so his brown hair is shimmering, auburn red, under the sun. At his side, another man, dark hair and dark eyes, probably a bit older and surely more relaxed than the blue-eyed one, a brazen grin showing under a pretentious moustache.

Margaery, Elinor and Taena moves forward to meet them, leaving the Septa with the other ones, and Brienne lets her gaze run all over the little station, her heart kicking wildly against the lungs, it must be that way, that’s why she’s so out of breath. No matter what she tries to say to herself, she’s practically in apnoea, and while underwater it feels so good to keep your breath and swim, spying the silvery shape of a dolphin or the violet laces of a jellyfish, here it’s all dry, and dusty, and suffocating, and gold.

Gold? Why is the city called Silverhill, when it’s beaten gold what she’s seeing? Brienne blinks and, as the steam dissolves in the air, she realizes that it’s just a man who strangely wears no hat, but a brazen crimson suit that fits him perfectly, from what she can judge from his …back, obviously she’s not paying attention to nothing else, even if the man’s improperly long curls seem to point directly to…

“Hands off!”, someone shouts, and Brienne twist abruptly on herself, just in time to notice a huge man in a dark suit, too small for his imposing frame, trying desperately to defend himself from three or four parasols falling on him like a rain of chiffon and embroidered flowers.

“Wait, wait, my ladies,” the stout man shrieks with the high voice of a squirrel, well, a giant squirrel, and very beardy, while at his left a copper-haired man is simply bent in two, keeping his belly and laughing. “I’m Mr. Lyle Crakehall.”

Brienne’s small trunk fell at the floor making no sound. Or maybe she can’t hear any sound, from where she is now, that is in her room, in Tarth, waiting for a couple of good hours of shoot training with her preceptor Goodwin. In every case, she’d like to hear nothing of the absurd conversation that follows.

“I don’t care who you are, you shouldn’t have kissed one of my girls,” Septa Nysterica scolds the stout man.

“But, my dear Septa, isn’t she Miss Brienne Storm, the lady that came out here to marry me?”

“No, you dumb, she’s Miss Megga Tyrell. Miss Brienne Storm is just behind us, the tall girl with untidy straw hair and cotton breeches - and this one is for having kissed another girl in front of your betrothed, you, sort of wretched wilding of the west.” Another blow, not delicate but with the delicately carved handle of the parasol, directly on the maniac’s brow, and septa Nysterica hurries away, dragging Megga, who turns back once, no, twice, her eyes bright, and a lovely pink shade on her cheeks.

The locomotive whistles, howls to the merciless sun. It’s not happening, simply it’s not happening, not to Brienne.

The maniac clears his throat, his black eyes staring at Brienne’s boots. “Miss Storm? Mr. Lyle Crakehall.” He has a very red sign on his forehead, turning purple by sunset, for sure. If Brienne begins to run, she can maybe reach the train and get some other crazy western city, by sunset. But she can’t flee, a Tarth never flees - and the letters. The letters are the only thing that count, in truth. They must count something.

“Good morning, Mr. Crakehall.”

“How you do, Miss Storm?” Mr. Crakehall lifts his chin, and he’s taller and even bigger than Brienne. Not handsome, nor elegant like his silly companion, but he does seem an honest man, in the end. A tender man, maybe. “Can I carry your bag?” She hasn’t any feminine bag with her, just a small trunk that she can easily move with an only hand, and she has no clue of what to do or say, actually. Not that having the insolent of the copper-haired man running on her overall body is of a great help. It makes her feel even clumsier, and uglier. She shifts uncomfortably on her freakish feet, and Mr. Crakehall misunderstands it all. “Are you disappointed?”, he asks, a hint of something in his voice, something that she’s not able to decipher.

“Disappointed?”

“Well, I mean, you didn’t expect a mangy old man like me, or did you?” It’s not delusion veiling his voice, it’s more… hope. Brienne stiffens.

“Of course, she did. You did write her everything, didn’t you?”, breaks in the copper-haired man, before presenting himself as Mr. Addam Marbrand, owner of the Burning Tree Corral, that is a ranch, quite big a ranch, and not merely a corral. _Of course._ “Pick up her stuff, and carry home this lovely girl, old boar”, goes on cheeky Mr. Marbrand, “so that she can cook you some eastern delicacies and bakes off the dozen little boars you want from those big hips.”

“I-I can’t cook”, she stammers, her mind gone totally blank.

A.

Dozen.

Baby.

Boars.

BOARS.

“Don’t worry about it, Miss Storm. In these parts, we just put things over a fire and take what happens”, says Mr. Crakehall in a breath, and he looks quite as desperate as she is. “So, that’s fine, isn’t it? It’s great, I can’t wait for us to be hitched up, can you.”

“Can’t wait”, she says, and thinks to the letters. The valley, among the mountains. _Mountains and sunlight, and the cleanest wind… through my hair…_ Mr. Crakehall’s dark locks are too short, to swirl in the breeze - you’d need locks falling loose to the shoulders, like Mr. Marbrand’s. Brienne shivers.

“I’m going to be the happiest man in town.”

“I’m going to be the happiest girl”, she repeats like a plucked perroquet.

“Well, congratulations to the both of you”, intervenes Mr. Marbrand, and she’s ashamed for the callouses on her palm, when he steals her hand to shake it, boldly. “Such a perfect match. Since I saw you, Miss Storm, I’ve been sure you were _different_ from all the other girls who refused our poor Strongboar, here, and for what meaningless faults? Chewing tobacco, getting drunk almost every night at the saloon, but I can ensure you he’s not one who goes there to stare creepily at the bare legs of the girls, no, Lyle just offers them a drink and a soft spanking from time to time, but only when the dancers come too close to his table, ‘cause his passion is gambling. And dice, but rarely now, after he risked to lose his ranch with an only thrown.”

“Yes, I gamble. Every night”, Mr. Crakehall confirms, nodding vigorously, with a renewed hope. It’s decisively hope, Brienne is sure about it, now, and she can’t help but feel a hint of… relief?

“Well, Mr. Crakehall, you sound as if you… Could it possible you don’t want to marry me?”, she asks, half terrified, half comforted.

“Wait. Miss Storm, I want to marry you. I want to marry you badly, I want to marry you awfully, but please, Miss…” he takes both her hands in his giant hands, “please say no.”

“No? Of-of course, if you do insist, I’ll say no,” someone replies. Brienne can’t believe it has been her.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss Storm. You’re so kind.” Both her hands are now in Mr. Crakehall’s hands, as he’s squeezing them, shacking them up and down, free and happy like a child that has just avoided a punishment. Or a man that has just avoided another parasol in full face. She should buy a parasol - one can never know - in view of her travel of 2000 miles back to her island, when she’ll find enough money to pay the ticket. 

“Well, anyway, your letters were beautiful”, Brienne concludes in a whisper, ready to greet her fourth _almost-betrothed_ and that smug friend of his.

“Gosh, Miss… I-I apologize, I didn’t even write those letters,” Mr. Crakehall confesses, becoming so red to defy even Brienne’s blush – and _Brienne’s blush is something to be seen_ , Septa Roelle uses to say to any visitor of Evenfall Hall. “It was Jaime to write them, and he wrote also the marriage ad. He’s so talented.”

“Jaime?”

“Jaime Lannister. It was Jaime’s idea, from the very beginning. You know, I bet he thought that it would be some kind of a funny joke.”

“A joke?”

“More or less. I guess he needed to get a bit distracted, because sometimes he’s so… well, he meant nothing unpleasant, though, Miss.”

Nothing unpleasant. 2000 miles for a joke. Brienne’s voice is a bit strained when she grabs Mr. Crakehall’s arm. “Where will I find this Jaime Lannister?”

Mr. Crakehall goes white and mute, but Mr. Marbrand seems to be at ease with every damned thing can happen in this big, modern world. “Well, he’s right inside the saloon, Miss Storm,” he says, offering her an arm. “I can show you the way, if you want.”

“I do, thank you, Mr. Marbrand,” she says, taking the handsome man’s arm, her back straightened, her muscles relaxed, her breath fully recovered.

She feels calm, now. Deathly calm.

It’s just 11 a.m. and funny, talented Mr. Jaime Lannister is already at the saloon, like any pretty, perverted fellow has to, in this horrible part of the known world. She can’t wait for the moment in which they’ll finally meet, and she’ll be finally able to thank him, with the polished manners of a stormland lady, for his exquisite letters, and get him some new, healthier distraction.

Oh, it’s going to be such a unforgettable day, for him.


	4. Chapter 4

Mr. Gawen Westerling sighs, as he looks at the girls performing at the stage behind Jaime’s shoulders, while the owner of the saloon gathers the dragons from the table. Not too much money, Jaime has been careful about it and he often lets the white-haired man gain something, since the Westerlings are rich only in honesty, being Rolph Spicer, Mrs. Westerling’s horrible brother, the true sponsor of the impoverished family. Raynald is a very good bartender, Jeyne is a lovely singer, they both work hard, yet their two salaries put together may hardly bear the costly burden of the old Crag mansion - but Gawen is a deluded man, his wife is a never satisfied parvenu, and they will never sell it.

They prefer closing their eyes and pretending that Jeyne’s gown is longer than the other dancers’ ones. Well, her gown is surely longer than the dress that Cersei will wear in the morrow, as her own personal reaction for the opening of the Ned’s House across the street. In truth, that “dress” is no more than a bodice of black velvet embellished with a great crimson rose that corrects, a bit, the too hazardous neckline – however, there will be a great deal of white skin in plain sight, for the joy of the good fellows of Silverhill.

“Four kings. Can’t believe it, Lannister”, Mr. Westerling is lamenting, his rheumy eyes still staring at the stage, where Cersei is probably playing with the long train of her golden dress, trimmed with feathers, to show at least one of her legs. “Lucky at cards, and also lucky in love.”

Jaime’s jaw hardens, but he keeps his voice cordial, as usual he does with old customers. It comes out just a bit harsher than he wanted it to be. “If you’re referring to Cersei or any other of the showgirls, you know it’s not my habit to have any sort of affair with an employee.”

“Nor with other gals, it seems”, breaks in old Crakehall, shuffling carefully the deck of cards. “I wonder what a good girl should do to impress you, Lannister?”

Jaime shrugs, picking up the first card. It’s so smooth, its surface, whilst writing paper is more uneven, almost rough, at touch. Heavier, yet lovelier.

“I mean”, Sumner Crakehall goes on, “You’ve become men, year after year, in my ranch, the three of you, all the three bachelors. About my grand-son, I lost any hope to see him settled, ‘cause he’s ugly , awkward and incurably romantic, ready to fall for any pretty face walking on the street.”

“Or climbing down a train”, Jaime suggests, and waves a hand to Raynald - today his throat is really parched.

“Or climbing down… what the hell a train has to do with anything? Don’t interrupt crones like me, blessed guy, I risk to lose the sense of my speech. I was talking of Lyle, Addam and you. Well, contrary to Lyle, Damon Marbrand’s son is a vapid butterfly who endlessly flies from flower to flower, but you, Jaime, you’re almost 33, not rough looking, serious when it comes to serious things. The best match in town. What a waste. How many?”

“Two cards, Crakehall. The best match?”, a half grin curves Rolph Spicer’s square face, and Jaime finds it disgusting. Or you grin, or you don’t - halfway being only for the such of Spicer. “I’m not that sure, Crakehall, not after the arrival of Eddard Stark’s first son. Worried about the great opening, Lannister?”

“Why should I?”, Jaime opens slowly his cards and, incredibly, four queens smile at him. “I’m planning to go there tomorrow at lunch, instead. I’ll stick.”

Westerling throws his cards on the table, soon followed by Crakehall, and Spicer loses only a hundred dragons, in the end. A pity. Next game, Jaime has a drawing hand, and an impelling need not to think of trains, marriages and other stupid stuff.

“Hi, everybody,” says Addam, and brings a chair to Jaime’s side, smiling. Everything must have gone very well, at the station. Perfect. Jaime’s happy for Lyle, and he’d like to smash a few fists on Spicer’s twisted nose, just to fix it, because that nose is really ugly and because his owner is really hateful.

“Mr. Lannister,” some girl calls him, but Jaime doesn’t bother to turn himself, it’s almost his turn to speak. “Mr. Lannister.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Mr. Lannister!”

“Go away, will you?”, he raises his eyes

and meets the longest legs he has ever seen. Wrapped in some ragged trousers fit only to light a bonfire. About the rest, practically no tits, shoulders broader than Jaime’s own ones, a nose more embarrassing than Spicer’s one, and just a couple of enormous eyes to prove the world that it’s a wench who’s annoying him, and not one of Crakehall’s cowboys. A fucking blue-eyed wench, to be precise.

“Not until I’ve talked to you”, she replies, red as a summer rose. Not a rose, an apple. She has nothing to share with a rose, of course not, and she’d be ludicrous in one of Cersei’s attires. The legs and the ass, well, they’re worth an attempt, is she scrubs herself well. Very well.

“If it’s about a job, have a bath, with a loooot of soap, and I’ll see you later.”

“A-a bath?”, she stutters, like an idiot, and Addam chokes a laugh.

“For free, of course. Upstairs. Tell Senelle it’s me who sent you, wench.”

“Lannister? How many cards?”, Spicer urges him.

The other two don’t seem to share the same haste of the rich grocer – Crakehall, in particular, is gaping at the wench but, it’s fully understandable, Crakehall women are all solidly built, and Mrs. Sumner Crakehall was quite as big as his husband, for what Jaime can recall from his childhood memories.

“Two cards,” he answers, preparing his best pocker face to peel Spicer off.

“Holding a kicker, Mr. Lannister?”, buzzes the giant beetle now behind Jaime, and he can’t help but jump on his feet, his promising cards flying everywhere.

“Hang your father, wench!”

“If he were here, it’s more likely that he’d hang you.”

Addams is no more chocking his laughs, he laughs openly, and Jaime opens and closes his mouth, like a stupid fish, his hand already stroking the lovely steel of his gun, before managing to say something. “Who are you? What are you doing in my saloon?”

“Congratulations, Mr. Lannister. So, you're an enriched gunslinger who owns this den of iniquity, very appropriate.” Her eyes dart around the hall, fiery and full of scorn. If she weren’t a wench… “To answer to your question, I’m just somebody who doesn’t like you, Mr. Lannister.”

“Oh, I don’t know if you’re a thief or a murder, but I know one thing, wench: you’re worse. I never met, or read, or heard of any wench uglier, stupider or more disloyal than you are.”

She startles, a hand closing in a fist, the other hand running to something that looks almost nice six-shooters, peeping from underneath the dusty jacket. “You’re a yellow dog, Mr. Lannister.” Her lips are swollen, and bloody red. Her chin is trembling. “Good day.” She suddenly says, and turns, and he can see no more those incredible eyes of hers.

“Who was that girl?” Jaime’s arm is in Sumner Crakehall’s grip, and it’s a true vise. The rancher is still incredibly strong, for his age.

“I don’t know, but I’m surely going to find out”, Jaime replies, and he’s already following her, the wench who has dared to harangue him with the epithet of yellow dog. A golden dog, at least. And a lion, not a dog, surely not a fucking dog.

“Hey, wench, wait a minute!” he shouts, slamming open the door of the saloon, and she freezes in the middle of the street, the sun doing its best to extract some shining from the belts of bullets at her thick waist, or from her dirty, pale hair. Longer hair than he has presumed, inside the saloon, falling loose on her back. “What was that all about, Miss?”

She doesn’t move, and it’s Jaime who empties the gap between them, gingerly, to understand what she’s whispering.

“When the settling sun lowers its mantle of gold…”

“…over the valley that shall be our home...”, he concludes, his guts churning. He knows, now. “You’re Lyle Crakehall’s betrothed.”

“I was. I’ve never been, in truth. It has been only a joke.” A rose and crimson tide washes her up, and her muscles tighten again under the worn clothes. “Brienne, I’m just Brienne.” Rags, she’s really wearing rags, the only thing of value being the silver and steel revolver she’s hiding, and the sapphires, swimming in the sea of freckles that make her face.

“Well, ok, Brienne”, Jaime reaches for her hand and empties his wallet in her sweated palm. “Look, the roll is a thousand dragons, then you have what I’ve won before your arrival, no less than another three hundred dragons.” He feels her quiver under his fingers. “Take them and go back home. If you need more, you can accompany me to the bank. Nothing has happened…”, her lashes are so pale, and so still, she never lowers her glance, “…except than a very tall wench has had an interesting trip.”

Brienne jerks herself free from his grip, and, quick as a rapid, fluid as water itself, she straightens her back and let the money fall into the dust, her huge hands already grasping his jacket and pinning a bewildered Jaime to the brightly painted planks that cover the porch of the saloon. “Oh, wouldn’t you love it, if I went back home?”, she growls. “Never, I’ll never yield, whatever you and the other rakes and cutthroats will do. Listen to me, if anybody leaves here, it’ll be you and your kind, men who run gambling places, and sell a lot of liquors to drunkards, and send lying letters to ladies…”

“Which lady? I see no ladies”, Jaime hisses back, his feet dangling.

She lets him free, all of sudden, towering on him even she’s only a few inches taller than him. “You’re right, I’m no lady, and before I’ll be finished with you, you’ll swallow those letters you wrote… and, yes, I hope you choke on them, too!”

The wench regains the street, where a small crowd of gals and wolves are staring at them, stopping in front of a sweated young man in a silly checked suit. “Mr. Robb Stark?”

“Yes, Miss?”, the fucking Stark replies, stunned, and a little intimidate.

“If you’d accept me, I’d like to be another Ned’s girl.” She says, her voice so changed, now, almost musical. The Stark boy blinks, and blinks again, and looks at the idiot at his right, till a dark-haired girl no more than eighteen takes the wench’s thick arm in her tiny hands.

“You’re more welcome, my darling!”, the girl sings, thrilled. “I’m Jeyne Poole, my father Vayon is the cook here, and I’m the head-waitress. We’re in hard need of girls with your energy, and your muscles. What a wonder! Would you mind help Theon and Robb with miss Margaery’s trunk? Till now, they’ve failed to lift it, if not for five minutes at any attempt, and they’re so exhausted the poor ones…”

The entire scene is absurdly comical, and yet Jaime doesn’t laugh. He observes the wench’s legs stirring as she lifts, with no apparent effort, the king of every damned luggage, a monster of leather and wood, with gilded roses applied here and there – until the cheers and the giggles of the girls fade out, and she’s swallowed, gals and wolves and trunk included, by the big wooden door, under the stupid white and grey sign of a Stark diner.

Another insignificant Ned’s girl.

“Well, if that shambling cow is one of our competitors, we can sleep soundly, I’d say”, Cersei comments, beautifully glimmering in the full sunlight, and chuckling.

The mirth dies on her lips, and her cold fury swallows the light around her, when she notices Jaime’s directing towards the stable.

“Where are you going, boss?” She adds, following Jaime and tugging at his shirt, now all crumpled and dirty.

“It’s no mistery, Cersei. He’s going to his desert, as he always does, when he has something to grieve on,” says Addam, a bitter smile on his face. “Let him go.”

“I have no idea of what grief you’re babbling about, Addam,” Jaime roars quietly, loosening his tie, shaking the jacket to get the dust and the wench’s smell off it, before taking the bridles of Honor, “yet I’m not going to any desert, because there’s a stream and even a small lake in my valley.”

“Yeah, your stupid and uselessly wide valley, boss”, says Cersei, “Why don’t you let me mount with you? Let’s us leave that valley and this stupid city at our shoulders. You shall claim the Rock, as your father wanted you to – and they say, there’s still gold in its caves.”

Jaime laughs, finally. “The gold has ended so much time, ago. Cersei.”

She beats her lovely feet on the ground, and Honor neighs, covering her scream, as he gallops with Jaime towards the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I confess I had to use for Brienne a picture from another movie, the 1995 "The quick and the dead", starring... well, Sharon Stone
> 
> EDIT: I choose Brad Pitt for Jaime, from "Legends of the Fall". Not that I usually picture Jaime with Pitt's features, but I liked the GIF (not the 1994 movie, released in Italy with a terrible title)


	5. Chapter 5

The house’s bathroom is just a small, high-ceilinged room with thick wooden beams in full sight, and an enameled cast iron tub that must been quite a luxury in Silverhill. Gingerly, Brienne settles inside it, when she finally remains alone - the privilege of being the last one to bath, having carried upstairs all those buckets filled with hot water for the other girls. She floats in the pleasant heat, the dirt dissolving off her skin, the sore muscles relaxing again, for a while - back in the lukewarm pools forming at the feet of the waterfalls, in summertime.

Back in Tarth.

She has written a few lines to her father, just to let him know that she’s well, and she’s well, more or less. Jeyne is truly a kind girl, Margaery has decided that she likes Brienne, and the other girls treat her consequently. Yes, Brienne is going to be well, wonderfully well, in this small town of the Westerlands. She gropes for the brush someone has left beside the tub, and starts brushing, sternly refusing to think to stupid things that can deconcentrate her from the wonders of her new job.

The first rule is that the guests must be fed, and quickly. The lunch counter is on the right, Mr. Greyjoy has said. Five girls serve at it, the other ones serve at the tables. Clean, lovely and cheerful, has added Mr. Stark. Always kind, because the customers is always right, except if he doesn’t want to pay or if the money he wants to use come from filthy places like Mr. Jaime Lannister's saloon.

Ok, maybe, Mr. Stark hasn't made any particular example, but Brienne is sure it’s implied, somehow. The Starks are an honored family, it is known – and before the Long Night forced people to migrate south the Neck, their ancestors owned miles and miles of lands in the North. They owned the entire North, according to Vayon Poole, but, come on, a cook can’t know more than the maesters and the maesters agree that it’s only a legend, like the tales of fabulous amounts of silver and gold in the Westernlands.

Tales, precisely. There’s nothing of precious in the Westerlands, only hills, and valleys and liars.

“Not so hard, my lady”, someone says with a sweet voice, “You’ll scrub the skin off.”

Brienne gulps, drops the brush and plunges into the water to hide herself, but the young man, more or less of a same age with her, simply smiles and comes forward nonetheless, his black hair falling in curly ringlets on his shoulders.

“Please, my lady, let me help you, it’s a crime to brush that way a skin so naturally white, and so delicate. Pure Andal blood, I’d say, and those freckles of yours”, he sighs, “I’d kill to have those freckles of yours, and a couple of tits like yours: small, firm, and perfectly shaped. Men go crazy for such kind of hidden treasures.” He sighs again, sniffs at her clothes, and makes a grimace, while letting them fall in a pile onto the wet floor.

The only thing that restraints Brienne from screaming is that the girls are already abed, and the fact that she can’t hit a feeble-minded man, who’s clearly not dangerous, only because she’s ashamed to be entirely naked.

“I won’t let you wear those rags again, my lady”, he smiles again, a soft, attractive smile – not a madman’s smile. His clothes are not costly, yet impeccable, elegantly cut, and the scarf around his neck is accurately tied in a loose bow, the white shirt immaculate under the dark suit. His palms are hardened by work, but his nails are clean and cured – he’s not definitely a madman, and he’s kind. Strange, but kind. 

“Brienne”, she says, not knowing what to do. “My name’s Brienne.”

“Brienne! I like your name. So musical, and feminine. Call me Satin, I had another name, longtime forgotten”, the youth winks at her, and a dimple shows on his velvety cheek, perfectly shaven. “I recall only that it was an ugly, mannish name. I wonder, why people aren’t allowed to choose their name by themselves when they’re full grown up?”

“I suppose it would be interesting, though a bit confusing…”

“Well, I think children need to be called somehow, and you can’t use numbers. But we’re chatting and chatting while your lips are growing bluer than your eyes, if that's possible.” Satin dives a finger into the water, and goose bumps raise all over her body. “Time to leave the tub, Brienne.” He finally turns himself, just to turn again a moment later with a large towel in his hands. “Come on, my lady, I won’t bite you, and, oh, I got it now.” He abruptly drifts his eyes, and his smile trembles. “You don’t have to worry about me, Brienne, I’m not interested in, well, what you have between your legs, not in the way men are, because, I mean, you see a man in front of you, but I don’t see a man when I look myself in a mirror.” His smile is gone now.

“Not that I like what I see in that fucking mirror,” he concludes, in a whisper.

She raises, reaching for the towel. “When one is as beautiful as you are, Satin, the mirror is pretty useless, I’d say.”

Satin relaxes and his grins is so bright, as he helps her to dry her skin and her hair. “Now sits here, Brienne”, he invites her, placing a stool near her, “or I won’t be able to comb you. Not that I’m so good as a hairdresser, but I’m a good saylor, you’ll see what beautiful dresses I sewed for you and the other Ned’s girls.”

“Dresses?”, she asks, and sits, trying to mask her anguish.

“Yes, dresses. Simple dresses, of course, but lovely. Yet Jon’s brother, that is Mr. Robb Stark, was right about you: none of the gowns I’ve prepared is going to fit you, so I necessarily have to sew another one in time for the opening. Forgive me, Brienne, but I’ve never met a girl that tall, before.” He adds, no tease or scorn in his voice.

“Nor I’ve ever met someone that special, Satin”, she says, grateful, and Satin giggles, before leaning towards her.

“No way to recuperate those rags of yours, Brienne”, he whispers, merry, in her ear, tickling her with his curls. “I’m going to toss them all in the fire, tomorrow.”

“I- I didn’t mean to trick or flatter you, I-I…”

Suddenly, Satin wraps his arms around her, from behind, careless of her towel being all damp, and somehow Brienne feels no more shame, nor embarrass. She likes to be hugged, maybe. “I’m going to sew also a pair of trousers for you, Brienne, as soon as I can, I grant you that, but I don’t want you to go wandering in such worn clothes in the meanwhile, ok?”

She puts her huge hands on his, and nods, two thousand miles of weariness dropping off her shoulders in a blink.

***

The dark blue cotton rustles on the pink petticoat underneath when Brienne climbs down the stairs, her huge hands stroking nervously on the white, starched apron. Luckily, she glimpses inside the room, before entering, and hides in a corner of the corridor just in time to escape the odd dance Jeyne is doing with all the other girls, with poor Septa Nysterica trapped just in the middle - the all of it, under Mr. Greyjoy’s mocking eyes.

It’s a sort of propitiatory ritual, and when Margaery’s restless eyes land on her, she feels a bit like the sacrificial victim – and she’s not far from the truth.

“Brienne, you’ve arrived, finally!”, the lovely girl shouts, and a crowd of small smiles welcome her in the dining room. Mr. Greyjoy rolls his eyes, sharing a knowing look with Taena, but Brienne is too concerned by the thought they may ask her to dance to be bothered by it. “You lost the best part of a Ned’s girl training, and we’ve got no time to do it again.” Margaery says, and Brienne breaths, silently thanking the Gods above. “We’ve just the time to fix your hair, my darling”, adds her short companion, her smile widening, when Elinor begins to untie Brienne’s braid. “All girls who are going to serve at the table must have the hair combed in the same way, we’ve said.”

“She’s not going to serve at the tables, she’ll help in the kitchen”, breaks in Mr. Greyjoy, and Brienne jerks, as if he has hit her. She’s glad not to be seen by the crowd of customers in Satin’s dress, that is straight and comfortable, but still too much a dress for her, yet Mr. Greyjoy’s voice sounds like a whip on her skin.

“We’ve been hired as waitresses, not as helpers!”, protests Margaery, shaking vehemently her index finger under Mr. Greyjoy’s nose, but maybe she was still asleep at 5 a.m. when Brienne has carried a ton of steaks and other meat in the kitchen, with Mr. Stark’s sullen half-brother, John, and the assistant cook, a boy named Grenn, who’s quite as strong as her. “Brienne is going to serve with all of us in the dining room, or we’re on strike.”

“Strike? What’s that?”, asks Jeyne, abashed.

“Oh, it’s a new fashion from Qarth, where Mrs. Daenaerys Horselord, née Targaryen, has freed thousands of workers from the chains of exploitation and…”

“Wait, wait, my southern belle”, Jeyne Poole interrupts Margaery, “Ned’s girls are the banner of fairness and civilization, and, of course, Brienne is going to serve at the tables. No need of strikes, stripes or whatever.”

“Have you seen her, Jeyne?”, says Mr. Greyjoy, losing the taste of grinning. “Do you want our costumers flee before even entering in the diner?”

Jeyne stares at Brienne, and Brienne prepares herself. She’s used to it, and nor looks, nor words have ever killed her. They only hurt. “I’m looking at her, Theon”, the attractive, dark-haired girl articulates the words, one by one, “and as head-waitress, I think you’re right, we don’t want to disappoint our customers. Margaery, I entrust you Brienne, she must be combed like all the other ones, white bow at the top of the head included, to serve at our best table before the main window, and rapidly, because in a mid-hour we’re going to open, and, remember, girls, once we’re open, no matter what happen, the guests must be fed!” 

“The guests must be fed!”, the girls sing in chorus.

Jeyne then goes back in the pantry, yanking away a pale Mr. Greyjoy, and Brienne search for a hole in the floor in which she can sink, but the besiegers are too many, and their commander has already brought two chairs, one for Brienne, and on for herself. Brienne swallows hard, and Margaery sits just in front of her, nodding in appreciation or shaking her pretty head with a disapproving glance, according to what Elinor and Meredyth do to Brienne’s wretched straw.

“Megga, dear, come here, please”, the Tyrell girl calls, and Megga obeys, shyer than usual. “What were you going to say Brienne?”

“Oh, sure.” The plump girl blushes all of sudden, and suddenly Brienne is more worried for her than for the cruel hairpins with which Meredyth struggles to fix the pale, rebel locks. “But I swear you, Margaery, I just smiled at Mr. Crakehall, I didn’t even know that he was Mr. Crakehall, and I had no idea…”

“It’s all right, Megga”, Brienne says in a breath, her broad face taking literally fire. “It’s not because of you, or of the kiss Mr. Crakehall stole you, well, it was about the letters.”

“Did you break the betrothal because of the letters? You did come because of them”, replies Margaery, with the merciless complacency of a princess in dark blue dress and apron.

“And they are such good letters”, says someone, maybe Alysanne.

“So romantic, in truth. And what wonderful curlicues”, adds Alyce.

“And commas after everything”, concludes Alla, and Margaery nods.

“You’ve read them.” Brienne states, and it’s not a question.

“For sure, it’s what friends do when a friend’s marriage melts under the sun like snow. We had to know, darling”, Margaery explains, picking out of one of her pouches a small bottle of rosewater. “and, besides, we’re not used to go abed as early as those former northmen do.” She chuckles, they all chuckle, and they stop, when Margaery realizes that Brienne is struggling not to take the door, and greet forever Silverhill and its schemers. “Come on, darling, we meant no harm. Help us understand, because I really don’t get there, what was wrong in those letters?”

“In the letters? Nothing”, Brienne admits, smelling terribly of rosewater. “Yet it wasn’t Mr. Crakehall who wrote them.”

“And who wrote them, then?”, the girls ask, shocked.

“A wicked man”, she says, and her hair are ready, and Mr. Robb Stark enters in the room in a frantic merriness, and it’s time to open, and Ned’s girls parade like soldiers, and the first customer to come inside is a wicked man, whose green eyes sparkle like emeralds, when he chooses the best table, the great round table before the main window for him and his accomplices, and puts his candid, perfect teeth in display, in the most wicked of all grins.

The guests must be fed, no matter if you’re too tall and clumsy and ugly, and they’re handsome and reckless and despicable. Clean, cheerful and kind, a Ned’s girl won’t ever stumble in her new gown. Brienne’s foot moves forwards, and her mouth opens.

“Your order, sirs?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Ezra Miller obviously wasn't in the cast of 1946 'The Harvey's girls', but I think he has a pretty good face for Satin... 
> 
> Taylor Satin is inspired by Satin Wall's design in 'Cold Feet', a lovely, funny fic by TeamGwenee about the wedding day of Prince Jaime and, well, you know who, maybe, but I won't say her name aloud - you can find this fantastic work (and the correlated series) at this link:
> 
> [”https://archiveofourown.org/works/23484499”](url)


	6. Chapter 6

“Your order, sirs?”, she asks, and smells of soap, of warm bread and of cotton, too. She smells of change, in a way.

“I’ll have a great big sirloin steak,” Jaime answers, parading his teeth as the wench parades on her head a bow of white cotton that is almost as big and ridiculous as the red feathers vibrating on Cersei’s hair, back in the saloon.

“One big sirloin steak”, she notes on a little pad, gingerly, word by word, and he finds himself wondering if she’s going to dot all the i’s with a hasty sign that resembles a tiny star, like she did in her letters. “How would you like your steak, Mr Lannister?”

“Raw, well juicy.”

“Very juicy, red like a maiden’s lips”, breaks in Addam, elbowing a petrified Strongboar. “One steak also for me, and one for our good Lyle. I suppose even Mr. Crakehall would like a steak.”

“I can still talk for myself, Addam, thank you.” replies Sumner Crakehall, grinning to the wench as if her freckles were small rubies and not just freckles, as shy and uncomfortable in the deep red of her flush as her crooked smile. “I’m old, but not that old, miss…?”

“Storm. Brienne Storm”, she says, and for the first time the wench truly smiles. Blue isn’t a bad colour on her, in the end.

“Storm? See, Jaime, a Storm has arrived in Silverhill,” Addam whispers in his ears, chuckling. “Aren’t you worried it will wipe the poor mothballs off that samll cabin you've built in your precious valley? Hey!” He suddenly ducks down, as the wench gives him a gentle whack upside the head. “What did she do that for?”

“It’s because of your manners, Mr. Marbrand”, replies the wench, quietly. “Mr. Crakehall wasn’t finished, and me neither.”

“Well done, miss”, nods old Crakehall. “We’re not in Jaime’s saloon, boys, in a place like this, full of ladies, you don’t whisper in someone’s ears, nor you blow in your soup. You fan it with your hat. Another good reason to wear a hat, Jaime, even if it’s not the main reason to wear it. What’s the main reason for which gentlemen wear hats, Lyle?”

“Not t-to be fucked up by the sun?”, tries Lyle, and gets a smack, not that gentle, by his grand-father.

“To take it off when he meets a lady, you dumb”, the rancher growls. “Forgive my grandson, miss Brienne, and the boys.”

“The boys?”, the wench repeats, the fake curls threatening to evade from below the candid bow. She’s utterly horrid combed that way, but, at least, she has become a bit acquainted with the comb. It's a beginning.

“Yeah, they’re like potatoes, fairly better than the rough, filthy thing they seem. On the purpose, I’d like some potatoes, with my steak.”

“Potatoes”, the wench annotates, so accurately.

“P-o-t-a-t-o-e-s, yes, miss Storm”, sneers Jaime when she finally raises her eyes, half a century later.

“Potatoes for you, too, Mr. Lannister?”

“Just the steak. If you can get it”, Jaime widens his smile and winks at her, and the wench frowns at him, but only for a half-second. Ned’s stupid girls have to smile, evidently.

“We’re famous for our steaks, Mr. Lannister. Welcome to Ned’s House, sirs, we’ll serve your steaks in a moment”, she hints at bowing, then hurries towards the kitchen, something pink peeking out the dark blue gown.

“What’s in the pot, Jaime?”, Addam leans towards him, taking advantage of the fact that old Crakehall is busy in instructing Strongboar to be more gallant with pretty, healthy ladies newly arrived in town. Strongboar’s skin is mid-way between gray and lilac, and with a bit of luck he’ll inaugurate the fucking Stark’s restaurant with a pleasant vomit. “Tell me you didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Oh, you’d do it, for sure, Addam. But me, I’m totally innocent.”

“Innocent of what, exactly?”

The wench has come back from the kitchens, red and confused. She leads towards a small brunette - or chestnut brown hair maybe, thin waist and tiny hands, the classical girl who'd be pretty even unkempt but who's never unkempt - and she gasps, when Jaime strokes lightly her arm while she’s passing by. “I’m looking forward to the steak, miss Storm.”

She gapes at him, her hands running nervously on the apron. Even her freckles look dazed. “You shall have it, Mr. Lannister. Just a moment, please”, she manages to say, before running behind the pretty brunette. “Wait, Margaery, wait for me”, Jaime hears her saying, and suddenly jerks on his feet, because she’s gone outside, and he won’t let her get by that easily. He wants to enjoy the spectacle till the end, and even Addam seems interested.

Addam isn't the man who gives up a good show, or who gives up his own opinion, clever or not that may be. “You stole the meat, you fucking asshole, that’s why you invited us to stroll over and eat at the Ned’s House.”

“As I told you before, Addam, I’m totally innocent. It has been Raynald.” Jaime chokes a laugh when he sees that the wind has untied the wench’s stupid bow, freeing her hair.

“Raynald? He works for you, and he admires you above any other men in the world, since you help the Westerlings in every way you can, Jaime. Still, stealing the meat… Oh, my Gods, that girl has a six-shooter in each hand”, concludes Addam, shocked.

“She had, you mean.” 

The brunette’s bow resists to the wind, but, while advancing proud and fierce towards the saloon she has let both the guns fall to the ground, and Jaime quickly reaches the porch of the Golden Hand passing through the small crowd, to have a perfect visual angle of the delightful scene – the short girl frustrating the giantess’ attempt of dissuasion, while the breeze plays with strands so pale that remind Jaime a good mug of white ale, freshly tapped.

A pity the wench hasn’t already noticed him. Jaime would gladly give a hundred dragons to know what's passing inside her thick head, now that the brunette has recuperate the guns and entered the saloon. 

He lets Addam go behind the pretty girl and spies at the wench, as she peeks under the door of the saloon, his blood singing as panic spreads on her cheeks, and changes her eyes into two round moons. 

It's only an instant, but in that instant the time freezes and the clumsy girl looks so miserable that Jaime's almost tempted to call Raynald, and console her with a ton of meat - and with a hug, a very dignified hug, just to show her how merciful a true westernman can be with a lonely giantess already on her knot knees. If only the wench would be a pretty good wench, and yield. A few tears, no more: Jaime’s not fond of tragedies, but he’s curious to know if it’s true that blue eyes get brighter when they’re moist, and casually he has with him the new fragrant handkerchief that aunt Genna has embroidered with his initials, just in case he ought to clean the snot from some girl's homely face…

Instead, the wench finds the courage to follow the brunette inside the saloon, Cersei’s realm. The great hall resounds of Cersei’s song, and the chanteuse is amazing in a sparkling black dress, the gown riduced to a row of little balls of velvet, swinging merrily on her thighs. Such lovely thighs, and such long, bold legs in black fishnet tights.

Of course, Cersei has long legs, but the wench… Jaime shakes his head, glad that nobody in his saloon will ever have to bear the absurd exhibition of a bear of a wench, dancing one of Pod’s last compositions with a huge boa of red feathers.

Brienne’s already enough hilarious in the plain blue dress that is so nice on the brunette.

“Get out, you drunk”, the brunette is now shouting to Dr. Qyburn, who’s there for the girls, and not surely for the liquors. Nobody has never seen the man with something different from a glass of milk in his hands, and this isn’t the only queerness about the talked-about physician. “Stick ‘em up, come on! Anybody that gets in my way… will answer for the consequences.”

“Well, g-good morning”, intervenes the wench. “What’s Margaery, here, is trying to say is that we’d appreciate it a lot, if you could give us back the meat that, for a curious coincidence, has been consigned here.”

“A coincidence, Brienne? Are you kidding me? Look at that long-haired man, who’s trying to get your attention since we left the diner”, the short girl is nodding in Jaime’s direction, and finally the wench sees him, and gets crimson. Crimson, not red. Crimson and red are not the same color, and the wench is decisively less ugly when she’s crimson like that. The brunette turns towards an abashed Raynald. “Now, scum, do you know who we are? We’re Ned's girls, from the Ned’s house, we got a lot of hungry people there, waiting to be served. We don’t want to hurt anybody, honestly, I don’t! But we’re famous for our steaks…”

“… and for your terrible hairdos, I’d say”, yells Cersei, covering the brunette’s words with a teasing laugh.

“… we’re famous for our steaks, I'm saying, and we’re not going anybody stop us. Come on, you scum", the girl tells Raynald, "tell me where that meat is or I’ll shoot.”

“Then shoot”, replies Cersei, skeptical, reaching Addam's side. ”Raynald would rather die than ear your croaking voice, miss Minion, or enjoy the beauty of that hulking friend of yours for a minute more.” 

"Highgarden!", yells the brunette, and, as he sees her closing her eyes and preparing to shoot, Jaime grasps the wench, and pulls her to the floor with him.

“BANG!”

One only shoot - the sound of shattered crystal makes Jaime aware that he'd probably have to call the glass-blower, and soon, for the pretty display cabinet that was behind the bartender. Or a porter, to throw it in the garbage. Being a piece of furniture chosen by Tyrion, it might be quite a good idea.

On the contrary, lying on the wench is not a good idea.. She's softer than he'd imaged but she's barely breathing, and Jaime doesn't have any intention to waste money for a coffin big enough for such a tall girl.

“See, wench?”, Jaime says, smiling a cute smile and grabbing her hand to pull her again on her feet. “Have you have ever seen a saloon with floors so fucking clean? I'll bet there are dust and fluff balls everywhere, in that stupid restaurant in which you work.”

She jerks her hand free, and scowls, the ingrate girl from the east. She glances down desperately at her crumpled gown, looking every inch happy like a soaked cat. The other girl looks triumphant, instead, the meat having magically re-appeared on the bar. Westerlings are rich only in words.

“Come on, Brienne, help me with all that steaks, we've got people to feed”, says the brunette.

The wench stares at the mountain of meat, before turning towards him. “A liar, a gambler and a thief, then. Congratulation, Mr. Lannister.” She lifts a pack of stuff as if she were born to carry on her shoulder the problems of other people. “What's your next move, sir? A shoot in the middle of the night?”

“A shoot, in the heat of the night, wouldn't it be lovely, my dear mail-order bride?”, Cersei breaks in, the feathers agreeing with her. “Just to repay the debt. Don't you know that a Lannister always pays his debts?”

“Enough Cersei”, Jaime intimates, struggling to keep the same speed of the mail-order bride who's already on the threshold, pale like chalk. “It has been only a joke, from both sides, miss Storm.”

“Of course, just a joke. You do like jokes so much, Mr. Lannister.”

“Well, wench, to be honest it has been that lovely friend of yours to come armed, with such peril for our poor Raynald's bowels”, he teases her during the short path from the Golden Hand to the Stark restaurant, but as soon as she pushes the door of the Ned's House, the wench and the brunette are swallowed by a cloud of blue-and-white girls, and vanish into the kitchens.

Someone is patting on Jaime's shoulder. It's old Crakehall. “Hey, Jaime, what's that story that my grandson is babbling about a gal who has made two thousand of miles to come and marry him?” Sumner is very tall, even taller than the wench, and his arms are still thick as hams.

“I'm afraid that Lyle's hangover is worse than I feared”, replies Addam, bringing away the rancher. “Let's sit, and think to what really matter, that is our stomachs. It seems they had some trouble with the meat, but our lovely waitress has settled it.”

“Oh, she's such a nice girl isn't she? Confidentially, Addam, do you think that Lyle has a some hope with her?” They sit. Jaime sits, too, his mind a bit distracted.

“Confidentially? No.” The kitchen door is always closed.

An old man sighs in the background, a younger man chuckles. The door finally opens, and the wench has again a stupid ribbon on her head and an even stupider smile of pasted paper on her face.

“One juicy steak, and potatoes, for Mr. Crakehall”, she says, posing in front of Sumner Crakehall a terribly good smelling piece of meat, perfectly cooked. Not that Jaime is that hungry, now. “And for the other sirs, three tasteful sirloin steaks. Very rare, as requested.”

Very rare, indeed. So raw to be completely uncooked.

“And dried prunes, for you, especially, Mr. Lannister. Because here at the Ned's House, we do care for our affectionate guests' and their bowels. Particularly, when they're also our beloved neighbors.”

Jaime's stomach aches – it aches even worse when the wench goes serving another table, and old Crakehall hits him with an elbow. “Well done, Jaime. Prunes, from Dorne, for free. You've impressed the girl, somehow. Don't miss the chance, for Gods' sake, and kiss her before she grows tired of this hole of a city and climbs on the first train for the civilized world.”

A smile resurfaces on Jaime's face. An ironical smile, that's granted.

Him, Jaime Lannister, Tywin Lannister's firstborn son and heir to the empties caves of the Rock, kissing such a caring wench, on her absurdly swollen lips?

Never.

NEVER.


	7. Chapter 7

The trousers are soft, of the same dark fabric of Brienne's work gown. Simply the best rousers she has ever had, and when she tells it to Satin, the incredibly skilled saylor starts guffawing.

"You haven't seen nothing yet, Brie. I'm going to sew you even a dress, in time for the ball."

"Which ball? Please, tell me that propitiatory dances are over for a while."

Satin smiles and puts the index finger on her too large mouth to hush her, and nods in the direction of the girls' dormitory. The door is slightly open, and there they are, Elinor, Margaery and Taena, doing... something.

They're light, and lovely, like three butterflies, their arms spread like wings, their night gowns of voile swirling in such a frilly way. They're not ridiculous, not at all.

A bit, maybe.

Just a bit. But Brienne's a shambling freak and can't judge, and doesn't want to judge, she should look herself in the mirror a thousand times before... laughing. Ok, she's laughing, after having seen the odd grimace on Satin's beautiful face. Quietly, not to let the girls ear, and hurt them. It's a nice thing to laugh quietly with a friend if you don't hurt anybody - and Satin takes her arm and lead her back to the garderobe, where her wicked friend fills two cups of wine.

“Oh no, I can't”, Brienne complains, but takes the cup. Her arms are so sore, after all that work, that even the cup seems incredibly heavy.

“You can, instead. This is the west of Westeros, and you must become a little wild, here, to survive.” Satin's ringlets shine, like the dark liquid Brienne decides to drink. “About the ball, it's nothing like the... well, whatever the girls were doing. Starks use to give a ball in any new town in which they open a restaurant, to get new customers, and sell the tickets.”

“The tickets?”

“To dance with one of the Ned's girls”, Satin empties the cup, and raises shifty to open a closet. “Look, someone forgot it, and no matter how many people I asked, no one has reclaimed it. This is silk, a costly silk from Lys, and that's definitely your color, Brie.” The roll of cloth Satin has just passed her is so thin, marvelous at the touch. “You'll be wonderful, a true tarty Tarth, trust me.”

“No, no, nobody will ever buy a ticket to dance with me, and dresses, you know...”, she bleats, and Satin furrows a brow, with again that weird, wicked expression. She has to laugh, and drink a bit more wine.

“Much better, Brienne. In Silverhill there's no fucking Red Ronnets, and if some ginger idiot peeps out his ugly face, just shoot him.” Satin glues a palm to the other palm, closes both thumbs and bangs in the air, blowing at the in-existent wisp of smoke coming from her index-fingers. “I'll bet you can shoot better than Margaery.”

“Oh my Gods, don't let me recall that moment, please.” Brienne hides the face into her hands, and her hands betray her.

Is that possible that after all the dish-washing she has done her stupid hands must conserve a trace of his smell? Leather, a inch of tobacco maybe – and flowers. That wretched man smelled of flowers, all of sudden she has been run over by a myriad of daisies, buttercups, daffodils...

Or more probably it's a fake memory, she's simply struck by the weariness – on the morrow she'll ask the girls to help her with the dishes, as Mr. Robb Stark has told her. Or the day after tomorrow. In the end, Margaery and the others have fingers so delicate... Even wretched men can be delicate touch, and not only with ink and quill. Brienne reaches again her cup to empty the cup, but she finds it already empty – a good explanation for the contort, absurd wandering of her mind.

“Turn off the lights in five minutes, my ladies.”, shouts Miss Jeyne Poole from the corridor. “Satin, you should be downstairs. Jon is already asleep, don't worry.” Satin nods, and leaves, meekly. Mr. Eddard Stark's rules are inflexible, and Satin has to sleeps downstairs, like any other male, but she prefers waiting for her roommate to be asleep, and Brienne can understand her awkwardness. Even Brienne isn't at ease with her body, but not at that level. No, not at that level. She steps inside the common bedroom, miss Poole and now even septa Nysterica following her. “Time to sleep, girls. Sleep, and not talking under the sheets for hours. Yes, Margaery and Elinor, I'm talking to you, mostly.”

“To us? Why?”, the girls says in the same moment. Taena reaches them on Margaery's bed.

“Oh, miss Poole, you're wrong like our lovely Septa. It's not Margaery, nor Elinor who keep us awaken at night”, states the dark-haired beauty, closing herself to Margaery's back. She seems so innocent, all the three seem so innocent, candid and pure like the shifts they're wearing.

More or less.

“It's Megga who talks all night long”, concludes Taena Merryweather, and Megga owls her discomfort. “Calling the same name, again and again and again.”

“No, it's not true, Septa, I do sleep, and soundly.” Megga's cheeks are of very bright pink, now.

“I know, darling", says the Septa, caressing the flustered girl. "Now sleep, all of you”. 

“She sleeps soundly, soundly repeating Lyle, Lyle, Lyle... It must have been a nice kiss, after all”, Taena insists, after the Septa and miss Poole have left, and Megga plunges her face into the pillow.

“You're evil, Taena, you shouldn't say those things”, the mistreated girl implores, “and you shouldn't have let that woman to see Brienne's letters.”

Any trace of torpor leaves Brienne's body. “What?”, she stutters.

“Is that true Taena?” Margaery asks, and her voice is not sugary as usual.

“It's true, I was with Megga and we both saw Taena with the woman, that one with those fabulous hair of gold”, adds Meredyth Crane.

“Yeah, miss Cersei. The chanteuse of the saloon”, says Alla, as much serious as a sixteen years old can be.

“They say she's secretly engaged to that beautiful man, Mr. Lannister. They're both golden-haired, with sparkling green eyes, they could be almost twin”, intervenes Alyce, and Brienne feels worse and worse.

“Alyce, what a disturbing thought”, Margaery says. “You should read no more of those horror stories... the one with the man obsessed by his cousin's teeth, disgusting. About you, Taena...”

A shoot, and they're all blind mice. The lamp, in pieces. The girls, all screaming.

“The low-down, crawling worm. Shooting at women!”, Margaery shouts, when it's fundamental to hush, and listen. Brienne can just glimpse the shadow of a tall, well built man, but outside it's too dark. “This is the opening gun in the battle for Silverhill”, goes on the thorny rose of Highgarden, forgetting that in the same afternoon she has stolen two guns, not one, from a holster hanging by the door.

“You can fight it without me”, says someone. Megga maybe.

“And without me.” In the darkness, the voices are all so alike. Scared.

Brienne rummates in her trunk, she must have a candle and her father's lighter, somewhere.

“Girls, please! Don't let this crude theatrical demonstration frighten you.” Margaery is not wrong, it has been a demonstrative act. A joke, someone would say. The lighter is finally in Brienne's hand, gold and so cold. She shivers in her cotton shift.

“Come on. I'm sure, when you calm down, that you'll change your mind and stay.”

“If I stayed, Margaery, it wouldn't because I changed my mind, but because I lost it”, Elinor says, her face trembling in the soft light of the lighter. 

***

The morning light is a delight, after such a troublesome night. In the end, every girl has decided to remain, and Taena is all witticisms and flatteries to get back her place in the pocket queen's consideration. Not a word to Brienne, and Brienne prefers not to think about it, and let the girls deal with the miserable garden in front of the restaurant.

"A nice excuse to investigate on what happened tonight", Margaery has explained her.

"Another smart excuse to change into lovely gardener garbs and flirt with the passers-by, leaving all the work to you", Satin has insinuated to Brienne, while helping her with the bodice, before she had to run downstairs to serve the breakfast. The guests must be fed, even at breakfast.

Guests are hungry, indeed, and strangely well dressed. Mr. Marbrand is freshly shaven and he's even wearing a tie, but he still enjoys eggs and bacon like a rancher, and gobbles up even Mr. Lyle Crakehall's ones. The poor black-bearded man doesn't even notice it, lost in the contemplation of the wall. His eyes lighten only when Megga makes a brief apparition behind the counter, but his face drops again when the Tyrell girl flees, a few instants later, after having confirmed Brienne’s suspicions.

“It has been the owner of the saloon, Mr. Lannister.” It’s just a whisper.

It’s just painful.

The tall waitress tries not to chews her lips, and to concentrate on the _clean, cheerful and kind_ formula. It’s not easy with Mr. Marbrand chestnut eyes fixed on her - he’s handsome and brazen like the scum who writes of loneliness when he’s surrounded by gorgeous women, the most gorgeous of all them being his…his betrothed. Betrothed is the right term - no need to put the blame on the chanteuse, if the filthy gambler doesn’t want to commit because he hasn't the minimum sense of honor.

When Mr. Marbrand pays the bill Brienne is frankly relieved - distraught when he suddenly stops.

“It hasn’t been Jaime, miss Storm. I mean, the shoot”, he murmurs, with a sad smile, his eyes low, his copper-brown hair cut short, and hidden under an elegant hat. “It hasn’t been him.”

***

“No doubts. It has been Mr. Jaime Lannister”, says Mr. Stark, his blue eyes filled with concern.

“No doubts?”, Brienne asks, gaining an odd gaze from the boss, and from quite everybody else. Only Jon doesn’t look at her, he always stares at Satin, sullen and apparently deaf, his dark hair long, his clothes always in disorder – not exactly the classical portrait of a former army officer.

“No doubts”, Mr. Greyjoy states, smiling slyly as if the fact just amused him. Satin says that Mr. Greyjoy's poisoned against the Lannisters, because he wanted to wed Mr. Stark's sister, the one who instead wed Mr. Lannister’s younger brother, certainly saving him from a life of dissipation. “I talked with Mr. Bronn Blackwater, a former partner of Mr. Lannister, and...”

“It was miss Margaery to talk with the man, not you, Theon”, breaks in miss Poole, rolling her eyes. Satin's right about it - Miss Poole and Mr. Greyjoy are always on the outs, but to Brienne miss Poole doesn't seem attracted by Mr. Greyjoy the way Satin affirms.

“This isn't relevant, Jeyne”, Mr. Robb Stark replies. “The point is that Mr. Blackwater has seen him shooting, and told us that it was Mr. Lannister to obstacle Brother Sandor in building a Sept in Silverhill.”

“A city with no Sept.” Septa Nysterica groans from her chaise, and Meredyth fans her with a frivolous hat of straw and chiffon.

“We could use the time we'd use to organize the ball to help the poor Holy Brother with his project”, Brienne timidly puts out, being immediately submerged by claims and protestations from the girls - and from the Septa, too. Someone is sneering, and it's Jon – so he's not totally deaf.

“Calm down, you all, no one will delay the traditional ball of the Ned's girls”, Mr. Stark cuts. “But we're going to offer the proceeds of the tickets sale for the Sept. So, girls, try to sell the more tickets you can, everywhere, and to everyone. Beginning from the nice saloon in front of us, miss Brienne. It's all yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: thanks to Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch for having borrowed his face and his gorgeous crow's feet to Addam Marbrand for this fic. 
> 
> Second: I have to apologize, I planned a shorter story, but the characters - and the GIFs - ask for a few more chapters...


	8. Chapter 8

If there would a championship for the most unlikely of all holy men, brother Sandor would surely win. Tall as hell, uglier than a demon, and massive like the blood-eyed mastiff who chases the damned in one of the illustrations of the old Seven-Pointed Star edition, that Cersei uses as a wedge for her dresser.

“Ale, and dark”, the disfigured man asks, and Jeyne hurries to serve him, with the silly promptness of a good girl - always a stupid Westerling, even in silk crepe and spangles, shy with paying customers, and quick in smiling to a beggar. Or to red-haired direct competitors that won't ever lower themselves to the likes of miss Jeyne Westerling. 

“So, you're back, Hound?”, snorts Bronn. Black suit, a gold pin on the red tie, he's all polished, but scratch the silk and you'll find the scum that the dwarf has adopted somewhere on his trips. “Still peddling religion?”

“The Hound is long-time dead, you know it Blackwater, and Silverhill folks need the Seven a heap-sight more than they needs some legs on a stage”, the beggar growls in his guttural voice, and the ale leaks out from his mouth, or better from what remains of his lips after the fire has chewed and spitted them. Cersei is too disgusted to take the trouble to replicate that hers, it's art, and not only an exhibition of legs.

Bronn isn't that wise to keep his bloody mouth shut, unfortunately. “We don't aim to have a Sept in Silverhill.”

“You've already got a Sept, scum. All I aim is to restore, and reopen it.”

“Listen, Clegane. We agreed you were going to stay out of this town.”

“You agreed, I didn't. You can't scare me the way you did those girls, last night”, replies the former bounty-killer, towering on Bronn, and Bronn isn't what you'd call a short man. He's more or less of the same height of Jaime, and Jaime is perfection, not only rich, but also lissome, golden and attractive like Cersei.

Heavenly beautiful, even now that he's striding directly toward her, notwithstanding the gloomy face with which the boss has waken up, the stupid cowboy attire he's wearing - stupid hat in his hands included - and the stubble of a beard marking his chiseled jaw. She'd gladly shave him, and more, if he'd let her.

“Girls? Which girls are you talking of?”, Jaime asks sternly, ignoring her.

He dares to ignore her. It surely the dress' fault - black isn't the right color on Cersei's porcelain skin, and she has told Senelle that she didn't like the sleeves in voile and lace, but Senelle is nought but an incompetent, lazy servant, always hiding when the head showgirl needs her.

Cersei stares horrified to her long fingers and to the nails Senelle has neglected to varnish, before tugging repeatedly at Jaime's worn shirt. “Nothing of our business, boss.”

“Yeah, nothing of your business, Lannister”, Bronn says, and Cersei doesn't like his thin whiskers or his gaze.

She has already seen it on the cutthroat's face, and there had been more than the fragments of a lamp lying on the ground, in the end.

“Come on, boss”, she insists. “There's always a gun popping off. That's how it is. Boys, probably just a few boys wanting to impress the Ned's girls, and a flying bullet hit the lamp where the girls were sleeping.”

“No harm done, and we got rid of a lot of them, already. There were just a couple of girls, serving the breakfast, this morning and one had a face that would curdle the milk”, Bronn's face relaxes, and a smile appears even on Jaime's face.

He's so gorgeous when he smiles, the light filtering through the cretonne tents creating a halo around his head.

“Pretty good, I'd say”, he turns towards the other man, and the halo is suddenly devoured by the rough cloth of a tremendous hat. “Brother Sandor, go ahead with the Sept. I've a few dragons to waste, today.”

A few. There's at least a thousand dragons in the roll Jaime is leaning to the holy brother. The equivalent of … so many things, and jewels for her, Cersei. A ruby necklace, why not? She deserves a ruby necklace, or, at least, some stupid letters- No she doesn't want some idiotic letters, deign of a penny dreadful heroine. She wants the dragons in Clegane's palm, and the Rock. She even dreams the Rock, sometimes.

The burned giant is as shocked as her. “W-why, Lannister, well, thanks”, he stammers, and seems almost Pod.

“Jaime, darling, the brother, here, has no sense of humor”, she intervenes, hinting merrily at recuperating the money, with her loveliest grin.

“I'm not joking, Cersei.” She had decisively to chose another dress, more risqué. A very low cut one is always a good choice, as Maggy the Madam has taught Cersei, when she was still a young idiot dreaming of silver-haired princes. “Go ahead with the Sept, brother Sandor, and go over the girls right away and tell her... sorry, tell them not to worry. There will no more accidental bullets in their lives”, Jaime goes on saying, and how much he's wrong, now.

Bullets and guns are so easy to find in the Westerlands.

***

Sometimes you don't even need to shoot to a person, to kill her. Smiles kill, and words - words cut deeper than swords, Cersei has read it in some old book, before giving up the reading. The protagonist was quite good, but the story was too unrealistic – a queen left by her shining knight for a hideous, freckled monster. Paper and ink bullshit, like certain correspondence she has to forget.

In real life, those kind of things never happens. In real life, when a hideous, freckled monster steps in a room in a plain dark-blue gown, everybody stares at her, sneers, or makes comments. Not nice comments, in truth, but music to Cersei's ears - she basks in them, toying with the onix-and-gold ring with a cameo that Mr. Spicer has gifted her in change of a few lovely words, not forgetting to smile fondly to all her loyal subjects, spread over the saloon.

The freak is brave enough to feign indifference, Cersei got to hand it to her. The ugly splotches of red on her neck and broad face leave no doubts, however. Big, she's big, but she's a prey, in a lionesses' den.

“Slumming, miss Storm?” Craving makes Cersei's mouth water, when the 2000 miles girl opens her mouth, visibly hurt. 

“Oh, no, that term, it's not... Well, I'm here, well, to sell tickets. Tickets for the ball at Ned's house, next Maiden's day.”

“Sold.” Cersei throws her a bags full of coppers and stags, taking it from behind the bar. Jaime won't mind about it, he never scolds Cersei, because Cersei is special to him. A pity that the shambling girl is so agile to take the purse with one only hand before it hits her in the forehead. “Now get out of here.”

The giantess doesn't recede. “Thanks for having bought our tickets, miss, but I-I was also looking for your employer.” The voice is hesitant, but firm is the hand that puts the tickets on the table. Gods, Cersei has never seen such a huge hand, in a woman.

“What do you want out of Jaime Lannister, then?”

“Nothing. I want to thank him for all the hospitable things he has done for us.”

Cersei wrinkles her nose. “You're letting get it go to your head, honey.”

“Letting _what_ go to my head?” The cow bellows, feigning an innocence that nobody has. Not certainly one of those Ned's girl, captained by that Tyrell coquette. Cersei can recognize certain natural skills, and that little Margaery is surely very, very skilled in the most ancient art of the world.

“Listen to me, listen carefully." Cersei leaves her eyes run all over the weird thing in front of her. "Nature has been so harsh with you, so I'll be gentle, and I won't let you fool yourself.” 

  
  


Cersei smiles, leaning on the bar, glad that Pod has finally interrupted that dirge he has begun composing since the arrival of that blessed train. “Jaime ain't doing this for you personally, honey. When he told Bronn to cut the rough stuff out, it was no love message to you.” Cersei's grin widens as the freak pales, and trembles. “When Jaime told brother Sandor to open up the Sept, it doesn't mean he'll put on a pair of white gloves, and cuddle up to you in the front pew.” The giantess seems no more a giantess, now - just a very small girl, in a big big big world. She can't be more than nineteen, an absurdly tall child, in a place where men want women, true women like Cersei. “If you would have meant anything to him, freak, he wouldn't have send letters, full with empty words. The such of Jaime Lannister don't need words, at all, not when they can kiss you, instead of talking. The truth is that you mean nothing, my poor babe, to him. He'll give you a Sept, and you can sleep all you want at night for Bronn will never dare to confront him directly, but the next time he'll look at you, he'll recognize you only for that crooked nose of yours, and nothing else.”

“You, you are in love with him”, says the very small girl, and her eyes are fucking bright, and filled with... empathy? May the Gods protect Cersei from such diseases.

“Me?” Cersei laughs. “In love with him?” She laughs even louder. "Why, he doesn't even know that I'm alive. Him and his damned valley.”

“Valley? What valley?” The beast's eyes are astonishingly bright, the Others take her and that blue of hers.

“He doesn't know you're alive either. You little, insignificant...”

“Insignificant, I am insignificant, you're right. Yet not that little, I fear, and I can walk, and find that valley on my own. Thanks again for having bought all the tickets, miss Cersei, contributing to the Sept opening. Sorry, if I've bothered you. Have a nice morning.” She turns, and stops close to the piano before going away. “Such a nice melody, Mr...”

“Pod. Podrick Payne, my lady”, the lad jerks on his feet. “At your service, now and ever.”

The Gods must be drunk to allow Pod talking without stuttering, and to let a guy exchange such a monster for a lady.

The Gods must be drunk, but there's still hope, in the end. If the Westerlands is full of guns and gunslingers, Jaime's valley is full of snakes – and behind the bar there's a huge bottle of wildfire, still closed. Cersei has quite a thirst, after so much shallow talking, and she has to celebrate - none of the Ned's girls can represent a threat for her, and she has to think to a great dress, for the ball.

A queen's dress. 


	9. Chapter 9

Miles and miles of sky above him, and yet that isn't enough blue for him, today.   
It's the dawn's fault. As a naughty child, she has dared to scribble with a rose crayon all over Jaime's valley, and, even if the man's stomach rumbles, annoying as another snotty kid, to signal that it's almost midday, a pink reflection still lingers on the rare, scattered clouds, making them look like vaporous, fluffy petticoats.  
And those soft hills behind the stream, they could almost seem... The prairie lion stares at the resting man, and chews, and chews, and even his plump cheeks move with a rithmic perplexity.

Jaime chuckles, sharing the same disbelief of the rodent about odd thoughts, but it's Jaime destiny to be misunderstood, lately. 

The small beast makes a high shriek of alarm, that is more similar to a dog' bark than to a lion's roar, in truth. Dozens of small, golden-tailed prairie lions disappear quickly into their burrows, practically invisible in the green, yellowish grass.

“Come on, bad boy”, Jaime says, raising, slowly, lazily, like a lizard in the sun. “Time to go back to work.” 

Spotted Bear protests with a very dignified neigh, preferring, him too, prairie lions and sloped meadows to the dusty streets of that flat, suffocating city, where nothing ever happens, if not for trains arriving and leaving, arriving and leaving... Jaime finds himself staring at the bridles in his hand, when the warning call of another prairie lion echoes till him from below, from the natural basin where three streams merges, losing their vivid green to merge, and form a wide pool of clear blue waters that only a chatty imp like Tyrion may challengingly call Sapphire Lake. 

He turns, and smiles noticing a self-invited guest - tall, very tall, her braids almost white where the sun rays dab them. Ungainly on the earth, she almost dances on the water surface of the widest stream, jumping from stone to stone with her grasshopper legs, a bundle of blue cotton and leather boots under her arm, the other hand grabbing the edge of a gown that shimmers the shimmer of silk and Myrish lace.

Myrish lace. On such a wench.

It's so ludicrous that Jaime can't help but burst laughing.

Caught unaware, Brienne freezes in mid-air, and it's not the cleverest of the reactions, one may say. Not when you're crossing a brook, unless you don't want to enjoy the benefits of a refreshing, healthy bath in spring cool water.

Jaime hurries to recuperate one of the boots, floating among reeds and iridescent dragonflies, being careful not to join the fishes in a jolly swim.

“Lost something, wench?”, he asks her, with his most polite and diplomatic grin. “A part this one, and your dignity.”

She glares at him. “Thank you, Mr. Lannister.” She grasps back her boot, and collects the rest of her things. Grumpy as an old, soaked wet cat, with a few locks stuck to her temples, and with that ridiculous dress - that isn't even a proper dress, just a useless bodice and a petticoat in the most vapid of all pinks - glued to her mannish frame, she's spectacular, in a way.

Even Bear is impressed, mayhap – no, he isn't, he's still grazing, unbothered, the white spots on his coat being less numerous of the maid's freckles.

“The Westernlands are not healthy for a wench, miss Storm”, he adds, barely containing the mirth in his voice, while the stubborn maid sinks in the mud of the bank with her bare feet, till the ankles. Next time, she'll accepts Jame's help to get out of the water, maybe.

“Why?”, she snaps, the flush on her collarbone pummeling, with no mercy, the pink hem of the bodice. “Do you mean because I slipped on a wet rock? That could happen back in Tarth.”

So the wench is from Tarth, one of the richest place of Westeros, they say. The cradle of civilization - Jaime has really a hard time not to burst out laughing again. “But back in Tarth, they'd find you.”

“Don't need to be found, thank you. I can manage”, she replies, scuffing the back of her feet on Jaime's grass to clean it from the dirt. The only result she gets is to gain a new odd shoe, made of leaves and flowers.

“Of course, you can.” He whistles, and that bad boy of his horse comes trotting. “ You can find something dry to cover those meager tits of your, and something to fill your belly, all by yourself.” Jaime mounts, and points south with his finger. “In that direction, just a few miles and you'll find Mr. Sumner Crakehall's ranch. The man's a good man, and he'll lend you clothes and a mare. Or you can turn on your heels, and go back to Silverhill, afoot. There's a shortcut, over there, you've got only to ford the stream again, but put back your boots, and keep attention to snakes. They hide in the grass, and even among the rocks.”

The wench starts, speechless, clutching her dripping rags to her chest like a shield, her eyes locked on the green-and-yellow sea all around her.

She looks so piteously uncomfortable, that Jaime makes a terrible mistake. “Or you can follow me and Bear, till the small cabin I own, five minutes from here, and if you promise not to say or do stupid things like trying to fly over a stream, I'll offer you meat and mead, and also some clean clothes.”

“Bear?”, she tilts her head, curiosity sparkling in her gaze. “It's because he's spotted, like the fabled spotted bears of Notoryos, isn't it?”

Nice answer, but wrong. He chortles, tempted to offer her a place behind him, on the saddle. But he doesn't want the saddle to get all damp, and the wench would never accepts his proposal, so he kicks Bear's flanks, glimpsing back just once, or maybe twice, to be sure she's not falling behind.

_Better, decisively better_ , Jaime thinks, as she finally gets out the wooden and stone house. Not properly a cabin, in truth, but the winds can be harsh, sometimes, and whip the top of the soft hill with the inflexible severity of a wench’s glance.

Not that she’s frowning now. The attempt of a smile softens the edges of her uncommon features, when her hand reaches out for the painted horse’s mane and Bear neighs in delight. Jaime agrees with him, trousers and shirt fit her more than any lady dress would. Luckily, him and the wench are of a same height, more or less - she may be a few inches taller, and the only inconvenience with her shoulders being a bit broader than his… Jaime diverts quickly his glance, not wanting think about it. He’s far too old to consent his body to have such stupid reactions. When he glances back at her, she’s looking at the horizon, her silhouette dark against the blinding sun, and she has more the shape of a woman, somehow.

“Thanks, and thanks for the clothes, too, the hat, everything”, the wench says, red cheeked, when he steps closer at her, offering a few apples, bread and hard cheese. She devours them, crouched at his side underneath the great oak, but refuses to wash them down with a taste of good ale, shaking her thick head so hard that Jaime fears, for an instant, that she’s going to break her neck – the mannered eastern girl peeping out from his wench. The wench – not his wench.

She’s only a weird, awkward thing who scowls too often.

“You were inside the house”, she accuses Jaime, shocked, her brow heaved with too many lines of contempt, realizing he had collected and spread wide her damp clothes on the grass, to let them dry in the sun, “when I was… dressing myself.”

“You should throw me kisses, and spread petals under my feet, wench”, he replies, annoyed. “It’s you who complained all the road till here that those rags are the only ones you have, and a Ned’s girl must wear a proper blue gown and blah, blah, blah. I gave you a favour.”

The fist opens, and there’s again her hand, big and calloused. “Tell me you haven’t seen anything”, she whispers.

“Please.”

“What?”

“Tell me, _please_. It’s called politeness, wench. A rare stuff in the eastern markets, I’d say.” She keeps torturing her lip so cruelly, that Jaime rolls his eyes. “Ok, miss Storm, I haven’t seen anything”, he lies, for the wench’s sake.

Not that there was so much to see – a rivulet of water, falling from her loosened braids, bouncing on the curve of her bottom, then tracing a long, wet line on her leg, so pale in the dim light of the room. Nothing interesting, however, since Jaime’s surely not interested in the wench. Certain reactions are simply natural when a man doesn’t bed a woman for a long time, and, even now, well, if she insists in sighing of relief like a stupid, shy gal, and her breast heaves, and if the thought of tiny nipples brushing the cotton of his own shirt - and maybe hardening - crawls into a poor man’s mind… Ok, maybe Jaime’s interested. Only a bit, and only because her skin is clean and smooth as any very young girl’s skin. Not in a sentimental way, however, so he does what he always does at the saloon.

He occupies his mind with something more useful, and to do it, he eases himself on the ground, his back on the grass, his nape on her thighs, to have the best view of the oak frond and to lose not even one single leaf, while counting them. If only the wench would be so nice to stay still and quiet, he might also take a nap, because she’s softer than he expected her to be. And gentler, too – she makes no sound, moves no muscle, and Jaime closes his eyes.

“It’s certainly a nice view from here”, she murmurs, and he wonders is her fingers have really caressed his hair, or if it has been part of a dream that’s fading too soon, in the mild air. “Is this where you usually come?”

“Yes. Whenever I want to be alone.”

“I think… it’s a good thing”, she goes on, her chin being very marked and very big from Jaime’s angle of view. “Getting off by yourself every so often. It gives you a chance to think things out.”

“And you wench?” He lifts himself, then helps her to raise on herself, because she’s a bit numb, sluggish, and trembles, lightly. For the cramps, surely. “What are you thinking of?”

“Me? Nothing.” She’s studying the ground very carefully, but there’s not even an ant in sight. “I-I just wanted to have a good look of the fellow…”, she hasn’t still left his hand, strangely, “…who runs a saloon on one side and helps a holy brother with his Sept on the other.”

“I’m not helping brother Sandor, nor any other.”

“Ah. His name is Sandor, then. I didn’t know.” The wench leaves his hand, and stays idle, hesitant, as if she wanted to linger, there, under a damned oak with too many leaves, for the rest of her life. “Your valley is beautiful, Mr. Lannister.”

Beautiful. Golden and crimson, now that the sun is going to settle beyond the crude peaks of the canyon, in the distance. A rich valley, and so desolating wide.

“Jaime”, he spats, and her eyes sparkle a pained blue. “Listen, wench. I’m sorry, for the letters.”

“Ok.”

“Ok? Sure?”

“I’m no angry about that, no more. I know you had a reason, Jaime, you wrote them for a friend. It was wrong”, she bites her lip, again, then exhales, “but… sweet.”

Sweet. Yes, sweet. “Wench, I mean, Brienne, do you mind if I ask you something? If I’d write a letter”, her eyes run back to the valley, “a serious one, I mean, with a serious purpose, do you suppose that some w… kind, lovely girl might be willing to see other than a gambler in me, and marry me?”

He swallows, as she wraps tightly her arms around her stomach, building an invisible wall between them. “Judging by me, well, I suppose that she’d take you like that, Mr. Lannister.” 

_Mr. Lannister._

“I don’t know, miss Storm”, Jaime says, dry, ignoring the sting at his chest. “I’m afraid that some girls are too sullen, stubborn or simply too stupid to go beyond their prejudices.”

“Pre-”

“Prejudices. Bullshit burning inside some heads too thick. Like the heads of certain ugly wenches coming from far, dreadful islands.”

“Tarth is beautiful.”

“Never mentioned Tarth. You did.” Jaime grins at her confusion, at the rage flowing under her skin. “Thanks for the funny show at the lake, wench, next time tell me before you dive in it, and I’ll take you a brush to neat the spiderwebs from the brain the Gods gave you with the only aim to allow you carry meat and wash ton of dishes.” He has stepped so close to the wench that he can feel the warmth of her blood, boiling, changing into steam. “Time to go back, and serve the good fellows in town. Serving something cooked, hopefully.”

She doesn’t reply, she merely stares at him, and Jaime isn’t a patient man. “Well, I’m going, and you can’t stay in the house because a Ned’s girl would never spend a night under the roof of the such as me, and you shouldn’t stay outside, here, alone. It’s not safe, for a wench, at nights.”

“Really, what could happen?” There’s fire in her eyes.

“You could slip again, and drown in the pool.”

“I can swim better than you, for sure.”

“You could pitch off a cliff.”

“We’ve got cliffs even in Tarth.”

“There are canyon wolves, the ones the first men called coyotes.”

“Dogs. What else?”

“Not to mention a few million snakes.”

“Sorry, but everybody knows the thick-headed, ugly, dreadful snakes of Tarth. What else?”

“Lions”, Jaime’s grin widens, as her pupils go big like wild cherries. “Are there cave lions in that small island of yours?”

“Tarth is bigger than all the Westernlands put together”, she dares to say, and she dares a smile, too. A crooked, girlish smile, smelling of apples and cheese. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen a lion, you neither”

“I see a lion every time I look in a mirror, wench.”

“A prairie lion, then.” She’s irradiating light, now, anger and mirth dancing in her veins, as her index finger dance on his chest, drumming a hymn of war, of triumph. “We’re plenty of cute rodents in Tarth. What el -?”

Jaime grasps her hand, stands on his toes, and tastes the word before it can leave her swollen, scratched lips – her tasteful, perfumed, scared lips. When he parts, the outcome of the battle has been reversed and the enemy is won, pinned against an old oak, the flaxen hair still damp on her nape.

“You got that in Tarth, too?” 


	10. Chapter 10

“You got that in Tarth, too?”, he says, and one of her hand is still in his.

Brienne has her father's hands - huge palms too wide for a woman and even the thumbs are stubby, calloused. Jaime's hands are a work of art, instead. Long fingers, elegant, writing thrilling curlicues up the back of her head, mussing her humid hair and urging her to draw him closer.

She can't, she can't obey to those fingers.

She ignores the heart tugging at her chest and the heat spreading up from her gut at they go on painting a kind watercolor on the blank canvas she has become, but can't ignore what his other hand, the left one, is doing her. His thumb, stroking her palm, creating circles - rings of flames in which Brienne spirals down, her paper will crumbling in ashes - and he doesn't hint to stop the gentle torture as he lifts her hand, bringing it to his lips.

It's like a sacrilege, to let him do that.

Letting him trace the line of his perfectly drawn lips with such a ugly, rough hand. Letting him kiss the water cuts on the pads of her fingertips. Letting him pose a wet peck on her mannish wrist. She suffocates a moan, wondering if Jaime's lips are tingling like hers, and catches in her breath when those soft lips of his leave her burning skin to curve in a half-smile, part teasing, part expecting.

Lost in that smile she can't understand, Brienne realizes he has brought her hand above his shoulder only when he presses her fingers among his golden curls, to reach for his scalp, for the smoothness of a neck adorned with tiny curls melting under her starved touch.

Her fingers mirrors his own, reciprocating the caresses, until their breathes becomes too ragged, his stare too intensely green, and her lips too aching.

She can't do it.

She does it, anyway. She wraps her arm around his waist, tentatively, and when Jaime closes his eyes, lips slick and parted, emerges a Brienne whose existence she has never suspected, a Brienne that draws him to her, snuggling him in her arms, tilting her big head a bit, when her nose stumbles in his and he chortles, nervously. It's a clumsy, gun-shy kiss – sweet, slow, which becomes too soon deep, and desperately, frantically thirsty, as his tongue starts exploring the back of her teeth, of her palate, chasing her own tongue - and suddenly she's out of breath, the man's hand is under her shirt, both his hands are too sure, and rough, now, his body's heavy against hers and the trunk is hard and humped and splintered against Brienne's back.

And she's again herself.

Not a Storm, nor a wench - he doesn't even know her name, because of her hypocrisy. She has called it prudence, romance, caution, but her letters were a pile of lies, in the end, not differently from his.

All the warmth leaves her body, her hands fall to her side, stiffen, dead - when he parts, his eyes still too wide and bold, she's frozen.

“Yes, we've got plenty of that in Tarth”, she answers, sharp, buttoning up again the shirt and leaving the shadow of the tree to seek for the sun warmth.

He looks bewildered. “Hey, hey, wench, what's the matter?” He follows her in the sun, and she can't stand the way his mane shines. “Are you all right?”

“Of course, I'm all right.” Brienne goes on one knee, and starts collecting her clothes from the lawn, blinded by a ray piercing through the wildflowers. Jaime has picked up the pink bodice and when her scowl intercepts his eyes, it's clear to her that he's not going to leave her in peace. “I bet you think that's the first time I've been kissed”, she spats, and his eyes narrow.

“Isn't it?”

She reaches out her hand for recuperating the bodice and the boots from his hold. “I'm going to be late for the dinner”, she replies, making a bundle with the clothes, not too messed up, because she has to wear them as soon as she arrives at the restaurant.

“Isn't it, Brienne?”, Jaime insists, but she's too busy in putting up her boots to consider his question. It's not his business, it isn't, and the boots are still damp, inside. They squish, as she walks towards... where? She doesn't know, she's just a tall, ugly wench squishing down the hill – charming. She ought to swallow her damned pride and squish her 2000 miles back to Tarth, for all the good she's getting.

“Hey, what's all this haste? It's a longtime I haven't kissed someone. Have I been...”, she shifts rapidly to her right, and he can't get to grasp her arm. In the effort, Jaime loses his balance and nearly topples into the dirt, had Brienne not caught him. “Sorry, I'm not used to crumble over wenches”, he says, smiling a small, astonished smile.

“It's all right”, she repeats, and let him free, turning her look to her bundle, fallen miserably on the grass, to her father's gun, glimmering a muddy silver. A beetle likes it, apparently, its polished shell painting black the Tarth moon in mother-of-pearl. _It isn't all right_ , she's on the verge to scream. The revolver, it will never work again probably, not after that bath, but it's her fault, not Jaime's. _It's always the girl's fault if certain things happen,_ Septa Roelle whispers in her ear. Good, honest girls don't end crumpled against an oak.

“Ok, wench.” He doesn't move, this time, when she crouches to get all her stuff – and she does prefer that way. “That revolver is quite a pretty thing, if you want, I know a man who's good in fixing things”, he adds, far too much meekly, looking something in the distance, but luckily no more looking at her.

Brienne lowers her eyes to her huge palm where the gun seems a toy-gun, wishing she'd know how to fix broken thing, too.

For a while, the only sounds are the hum of the insects and the steady, muffled thuds of the horse's hooves. Brienne is somehow sure that the silence isn't going to last, the tension of Jaime's back revealing her that he isn't at ease without talking, but when he finally breaks the silence is to hum a song, not to talk.

 _It's the song the boy, Podrick, was playing at the piano_ , she realizes, recalling the guy. Big eyes, big mouth, big ears, and a body too green to know id he'll be still that scrawny in a few years. A nice, shy fellow, making such a weird face when Brienne complimented him.

Talented like few. Her father has often given concerts and balls, included her debutante ball, but Brienne has never heard something like the melody Jaime's still humming, and she finds that she's less uncomfortable than before, grateful for the soothing notes, echoing the bird' chirping, or, maybe, the sobs of a fountain in an ancient castle yard.

The ride isn't that awful, from the moment the music begins. She needs no more to feign of being elsewhere, to feign of being not clutched to Jaime's back. It's almost pleasant to be that close to him, now that he's relaxed and that he can't see her face. The sun plays among the hills, and makes her believe to have seen the silhouette of something huge, something noble, and beautiful.

“Not a bear”, she utters, not daring to give voice to her imagination.

“Why not Bear?”, Jaime replies, and the shadow disappears behind the rock on which he was standing fiercely just a moment before. She's gone mute, because obviously it couldn't be a lion, a true lion. Lions are long time extinct, it is known. “Bear is not a terrible name, for a strong and tough mount, I guess. Anyway, it was my brother who called him that way. As any drunkard and debauched, Tyrion loved that song, you know which one.”

She shakes her head, a lump settled in her throat, a sense of emptiness filling her chest. She'll never see a lion - that's all.

“Wench? What are you cogitating about? I mean, I don't have eyes on my back, are you still awaken, at least?” She tightens her grasp on his waist, enough to make him squeak like a mouse, and repents, immediately, but it seems he's not that bothered. “Ok, I got it. Since you do beg me so kindly, I'll sing again for you. For you and all the other annoying flies, ok?”

So they rise, together, and Jaime sings, and he's quite good at it. A pity the song. Nothing special, just good for a tavern or a saloon.

“I know it's a silly ballad, wench”, he explains, as he has finished, reading her mind. “Tyrion always laughed at it, particularly when the maiden kicks and wails and so on.”

“It's a stupid song”, she confirms.

“It's a merry song, wench. It's not prohibited by law to be jolly, and that's what we aimed at, my brother and I, when we opened the Golden Hand”, Jaime goes on, the city now in sight. “Offering fun, excitement, a couple of hours of diversion.”

“Along with a headache and a empty pocket the next morning.” She shrugs. “I don't buy it, Mr. Lannister, and I can't get why a girl should be glad if a bear licks her hair and force her to wash and comb it anew. It's pure nonsense.”

It's absurd, indeed. Tiding her hair is a daily torture, and Jaime's laughs are completely out of place. She's relieved when they arrive, finally, and Jaime ties the painted horse to an itching post, in the yard hidden behind the Sept. With a bit of luck no one has seen them, and Brienne is still in time to sneak in the Ned's House from one of the back doors, and ask Satin to help her with the bodice, before the dinner service starts.

“It has been a nice ride, hasn't it? I mean, Bear is a good horse, after all”, he says, his hat in his hands. Ready to disappear in the gilt and glitter of his charming establishment.

“I enjoyed it, too”, she replies, hoping for a hole to swallow her. “Now we part.”

“Right, we do part. May the Gods preserve you from being late or Robb Stark will whip you”, Jaime says, not too mockingly. His tone is soft, in the end, or maybe it's the first star of the evening, shining so lovely in a rose sky, that's softening everything, in a way.

“Take care, Mr. Lannister”, she says, and turns.

With some quick strides Brienne has already reached the back porch of the restaurant, but he's there, too. Short breathing, like one who has been running.

“You forgot this”, Jaime says, smiling, handling her the bundle with her gown and the rest.

Her hands brush his when she takes it, making her stammering a too hurried thank.

“Don't you mind, there's nobody in sight, miss Storm”, he adds, looking at her oddly, then a green flame raises in his gaze, and he puts something gilded over her bundle. It's a revolver, bathed in gold, the red stone on his grip having the dark charm of a true ruby. “Just until I'll give you back yours. Take it, as a precaution, I've got two.”

“I can't...”

“I thought you weren't one of those helpless women and that you'd be able to use a gun, miss Storm.”

“I _can_ use a gun, yet...”

“There's no yet or _but_ or whatever. Not in the wild, dangerous city of Silverhill”, he grins, and the edges of his grin almost touch the even star, above them. She's looking in her empty head some cute words to refuse the gift, no, the loan, when Jaime suddenly tightens, like the string of an old crossbow. “Haven't you heard? Stay here”, he orders, before she can even think of an answer.

Confused, Jaime's gun in her hand, the bundle of clothes under her other arm, Brienne follows the running man inside the building, then in the kitchen's pantry, where Jeyne Poole is wailing, terrified, and there she sees it.

She sees its tail, first. Rattling a deadly rattle. Then its bifurcate tongue.

They shoot together, she and Jaime, and Jeyne lets herself collapse to the floor, her eyes still locked to the blooded thing that once was a snake.

Brienne would like to hold her, and cradle her, but she's trembling a bit too much to do it.

“She might have been bitten”, Brienne tells Jaime, the gun heavy in her hand. Curiously, she has shoot with her left, and, even more curiously, she hasn't noticed the arm Jaime has wrapped on her belly.

Mr. Greyjoy notices it, instead, but he's too in a hurry, to say anything. Mr. Poole almost faints, when he comes inside, and then the small room is so full with people that Brienne can hardly breaths.

“Come on, girls. Be good, get out of here”, the boss yells. “The guests must be fed. You, Brienne, why are you dressed that way? Is that another of Satin's extravagances?” There's cold rage in the glance that Robb Stark directs to her, and to Jaime. “Hope this isn't your idea of good neighborhood, Mr. Lannister.”

“Leave Satin in peace, and look at the gun in Lannister's hand, before saying bullshit, Robb”, someone says. It's Jon, dark-haired, dark-faced. “It was him who killed the snake.”

“Yes, Mr. Lannister did kill the snake, with Brienne”, breaks in Jeyne, still in Theon's arms, and judging from how quickly Jaime lowers his arm and from how murderous is the spark in Jaime's eyes, the owner of the saloon and of the most beautiful valley of Westeros doesn't like his name being associate with hers. Absentmindedly, she burrows something heavy and cold in her pocket, before fretting upstairs to wash her face with cold water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Bear is a watercolor by the artist Oksana Dimitrenko - I don't own anything!
> 
> Pod is featured by Robert Sheenhan, whose characters aren't the classical example of shy boys, yet I hope you shall like this choice.


	11. Chapter 11

Long strides in the dusk, raising enough dust to choke Jaime, but not the wolf pup trotting at his side, unfortunately.

“Lannister, a word.”

“How about enjoying a bit of good music, instead?”, he smiles, pushes the door and the lights of the saloon smile him back. “Jeyne, please, a glass of red dornish for our good kid, here.” The grey-eyed boy stops to gape at Jeyne and at the row of glittered legs on stage,

so Jaime can reach the scum who claims to be his partner, curled on the bar, chatting quietly with Cersei, like a nice, reasonable rattlesnake.

“Hi Cersei, hi Bronn, how are you?”, Jaime pats on the man's shoulder. “I'm fine, even finer since I killed that lovely pet of yours.”

Bronn's face hardens. “Don't get it, Lannister.”

“Get this.” Bronn's face isn't that hard when Jaime knuckles hit it, fortuitously, making him stumble down the high stool. “Gods, Bronn, I'm so sorry, but as you often say, in the Westernlands accidents happen form time to time. Just pay attention not to spit blood on the parquet, please. Here's a handkerchief for you from our kind Cersei.” The stool is so lonely without Bronn's ass to warm it, that Jaime feels compelled to drag the dopey man back on it. “Say _thank you, Cersei_.”

“Thank you, Cersei”, hisses the scum, pressing the handkerchief to the bleeding gums.

“That was pure silk, boss.”

“It's still pure silk, Cersei. Bronn will return it to you soon, washed and ironed.”

“No, thanks.” Cersei frowns, “Consider it a gift, Bronn.”

“What a generous woman”, Jaime tilts his head with an approving nod. “Are you happy, Bronn? You should, luckily your peel is far more resistant than your pet's. Now, always about sad accidents, if anything else happens to the Ned's girls, guess who will reach the poor snake in one of the seven hells?”

“I guess you've joined up with the petticoats. See, Cersei, I told you, he's falling for that...”, Bronn pauses, then grins a feral grin, “...tall girl.”

“I haven't joined anything.”

“See, Bronn? Jaime hasn't joined anything, nor anyone.” The anxiety in Cersei’s voice is palpable, but Jaime has eyes only for the cutthroat.

“All I'm saying to you is, lay off, and have a drink.”

“A drink? Why not?”, Bronn catches the first glass on the bar, and empties it, wiping some drops of Wildfire from his thin whiskers. “Nice. Now it's my turn. I'll get the next one in.” The man's gaze cuts like the knifes Bronn always hides on himself.

“Lannister!”

 _Not now,_ thinks Jaime, but the short man in brown rags who has shouted is already between him and Bronn. Intensely looking at him with all the sullenness of his boring mud shirt,

  
  


annoyingly covering part of Jaime's view.

“Lannister!”, insists the boy who must have a name. Everybody has a name, in this fucking world. “Is that one, isn't it? The one who...”

“The one who's not wanting to hear a child wailing before dinner”, Bronn snaps and the guy takes the bite.

“My name is Jon and...” Jon twists on himself and Bronn's arm moves so fast that Jaime can barely block it before the knife reaches the guy's stomach.

“Curious, another accident”, Bronn grins. “Today I'm not that lucky, it seems. I suppose it's better if I come back home and have some rest.”

“On the contrary, you've been particularly lucky, Bronn.” Jaime replies, the knife safe in his hand. “Have sweet dreams, though.”

The scum nods, and leaves. Wisely, Cersei has put her hand on the wolf pup's to prevent any other stupid reaction, so the guns stay where they have to stay. In their holsters.

“Next time, Jon, be kind and wait for the adults to give you the permission of talking.”

“I-I... You let him go, Lannister”, the guy replies, his eyes big and judgmental like his fucking father's, until they suddenly soften. “You're bleeding, sir.”

It's true, blood is dripping from Jaime's palm. “Just a scratch. No, Cersei, let it be, I can manage all by myself.”

“All by yourself, or with the help of this one, maybe.” Cersei laughs. “Are you sick of black ringlets and you'd like a taste of spun gold, aren't you, pretty boy? I understand, of course I do.”

“Don't know what you're referring to, miss”, Jon protests, his cheeks flushed like a wench's cheeks.

“Then you know nothing, Jon”, Cersei laughs louder and leaves, finally.

Time for the grey-eyed guy to leave, too – or maybe the Gods have decided otherwise.

“Mr. Lannister, Satin was right about you. I'm here to tell you we can be ally, good neighbors or something that way.”

It's worse then what Jaime has thought. The cut, and the stammering of this sort of Ned Stark's miniature.

“Jon, can I call you Jon?”

“Sure, Mr. Lannister.”

“Well, Jon. We're not neighbors, we're competitors. See that door, push it and go helping your lovely brother in destroying my business.” The boy's mouth is so wide opened that he could swallow an army of flies. “Before you go, let me thank you for guarding me and my employees from the perils beyond the street. Wolf pups and baby krakens and whatnot. We're grateful to have good, strong men like you protecting us.”

“That's...”

“Give my regards to all the Starks, obviously. I'm sure it's so thrilling to be a Stark, and if not, well, it's only for this life. Pray and next life you might be luckier, and born a monkey, for instance.”

“You, you...” With both hands closed in a fist, Jon reminds Jaime a very naughty kid of maximum twelve.

“You should help this Satin of yours and all the girls serving the dinner, that's what a gifted boy like you is supposed to do at Starks' court, isn't it?”

All the energy seems have dropped off the boy. “Satin isn't...”

“Your girlfriend?”, Jaime's veins fill with fervor at the sight of the idiotic numb in front of him. “A pity. When you're lucky enough to meet the right one, you should tell her that she's the right one, pull her into your arms and kiss her, but gently, have you understood? Gently, not as the starving beast you are, ok?”

“Gently”, Jon repeats as a talking crow, shocked.

“And keep your hands in the pockets before allowing them to... explore. No exploring, ok? Treat the girl as a queen, ok?” Jaime's hand is throbbing hard, now.

“Flowers?”

“Flowers, gifts, these are good ideas. Em, the widow of Goldust, will sell you the roses of her garden, if you ask her.” Emma is such a kind woman, indeed. She would even give her blossoms for free to help a smitten boy. “Be delicate, Jon, ok? Don't hurry, most of all, don't hurry or you'll spoil everything.”

“But when I see her my throat goes parched and the party's imminent.”

“Which party?”

“The girls' traditional ball, into a week. Buy a ticket and you get admitted to the party. Buy a special ticket and you get the right to dance with the girl you choose.”

“Every girl?”

“Every girl, yes”, Jon answers, suddenly sad.

“Margaery has sold a lot of tickets, but miss Jeyne, the girl who pleasantly served me a glass of wine, told me that Satin's friend, Brienne, has sold all her tickets, included the special ones.”

“What?” Jaime hits the polished surface of the bar with a punch, and it's not the cleverest idea of his wretched life. Pain strucks him like a thunderbolt.

“Here, in the saloon. A record. But are you well, sir?”

“Well? Very well. A delight. Cersei's right, you really know nothing, Jon,” Jaime has the time to say, before the world goes dark.

The knife was dirty. Or worse. Not worse than Cersei's river of agitated words. It makes his head big like the dragon shaped kite Jaime had once built for Tyrion, so he's glad when the chanteuse finally surrenders and goes away.

“Again, sir?”

“Again, Pod.” Music is necessary to dance the Stranger's dance, and if you keep your eyes closed, you can even think you're in a valley, crossing a stream in an odd way, like jumping from stone to stone amidst frogs and dragonflies. “No leeches, I've said.” He glares at Addam and at the weird man close to him. A wizard, more than a maester, with a threatening basket. The lullaby starts, gentle like a girl's fingers through his hair, and Jaime lets it carry him back to the valley.

  
  


“Piss off. No maester, I've said.”

“Drink”, she answers, calm. He open his eyes, and she's there, smelling of soap as her thick arm supports Jaime's back and neck - and that can be just a hallucination, so he drinks even if the water is apparently so bitter and chalky, and he's so tired.

  
  


The hand is no more throbbing. It aches a bit, only a bit, free from every bandage and Jaime feels so ..light. A pile of bricks has been just removed from his chest and he can breath, easily, in clean, dry clothes of cotton. In the trembling shadows cast by the candle, she's white like a cotton flower and her eyes are large like a plowed field, rubbed and puffy - and she looks quite a beauty. It can't be.

“The fever, it must be the fever”, he explains her, but the wench shakes her head, bothersome.

“No, Jaime. You're no more feverish.”

It's Addam, his voice curiously fogged. “Thanks to Podrick. It was him to call the lady, when finally you stopped asking for that song. You're really a pain in the arse when ill, so try not to get infections for the next forty years, ok?”

“Ok.” He has really said _ok_. To Addam. He can't be totally healed.

“Ok.” Addam's treating him like he treats old Crakehall, sometimes. “Now, I have to inform Strongboar that no coffin is needed, so he can try to get back his money, maybe. Podrick, time to sleep for you.”

“Pod. Another time, please”, Jaime croaks, putting his good hand on hers, to make sure the wench can't flee, as she already hinted at.

“I have to go back, in time for the breakfast service”, she say, hypnotized by the candle, flickering in the dark.

Stupid, stubborn wench. 

“You gave me something to drink.”

“A preparation, water, lemon and a powder obtained by the cortex of a tree, in Essos. I took it with me from Tarth, it helped you to keep the fever down, but it was your body that fought the ...intoxication”, she looks down at Jaime's wounded palm, that looks no more inflamed, and her freckles play monsters-and-maidens with the candle light. “It's a remedy well known in the Stormlands, since my father brought it from one of his sea travels.” Her voice dies, all of sudden.

“Your father, he isn't a mere merchant.” It's not a question.

The wench takes a deep breath, before speaking again. “He's not. He's a Tarth, owner of Evenfall Hall and most of the island, and I'm his heir.” A Tarth, of Tarth. One of the most ancient and powerful families of Westeros. One of the few ones who survived the Long Night, and prospered through the centuries - and the wench is one of them, heir to an empire. Slowly, necessarily, Jaime's hand leaves hers, and hides under the blanket. “I-I'm sorry, for having lied, even in... the letters. I know it was only cowardice, I-I.. please forgive me.”

“There's nothing you should ask to be forgiven for”, he says, but she doesn't stop gnawing at her fingernails. Gods, if she's young, and unsophisticated. “Does your father knows you're here?”

“He knows I'm well.” Brienne's voice cringes, as the first notes coming from the piano in the saloon hall.

“So, you're well.”

“T-the girls treat me kindly, and even Mr. Stark is no more angry with me.” Jaime moves his fingers tentatively and they hurt, but they work well enough as Mr. Robb Stark will soon discover. In a few days, the time of getting fully recovered and sending a message via telegraph to disturb a certain dwarf during his honeymoon.

“Thanks for the medicine, miss Tarth. You should go, now, before they'd find out you're in such a wicked place.” She startles, and when she goes on her feet, Jaime realizes she's wearing the shirt and the trousers he gave her, back in the valley house.

“Can I stay, just the time of the song?”, she asks in a murmur, and he should refuse.

“Only if you do sit, wench, and close that big mouth of yours.” He closes his eyes, her fragance too damn intense to be ignored, the Others take him and any other stupid Lannister who talks without reflecting.


	12. Chapter 12

She's caught totally unaware. The more the woman yells and pinches Brienne's arms, the more Brienne drowns in confusion, her mind gone blank, if not for a name. A name, and a face, that is pale, but not so pale, crowned by a messy gold, all tangled.

 _He's well and recovering quickly,_ she realizes when he blinks, and gets to sit on the bed, without any help, his mouth already preparing itself for a quip, or a smile. 

“Wench?”, he calls, giving her a look that is more hurting than Cersei's painted nails - and, then, the maid recalls everything of the longest night of her life: Jaime's breathing heavy, then lighter, his skin finally fresh, the forehead slick with sweat until she wiped it with a clean cloth. Jaime being so serene, becoming suddenly serious when he invited her to go away - and the song, the bittersweet truce, her eyelids closing, treacherously, despite her efforts to keep awake.

She'd like to explain she didn't do it expressly - staying and imposing her presence - but the light pierces through the shutters, hitting her hard like the truth. She's not welcome.

Heart splinters stick up her throat and Brienne jerks so suddenly from the chair where she has fallen asleep that Cersei stops insulting her and takes a step back, amazing in her white, dotted, dress - and clearly satisfied. The beautiful woman is not the intruder, here - Brienne and her shambling legs are in a place they don't belong, instead.

“Wench”, Jaime protests, again, and she has nothing to reply, or do, but find her way out the building hosting the Golden Hand, her nose filled by the smell of pine sap coming from the only, sad tree still defying the dust and by the inviting smell of bacon, smashed potatoes and eggs.

From the window, Brienne notices Septa Nysterica and the girls, almost taking their fighting places before the arrival of the breakfast train with many occasional passengers and Silverhill citizens, eager to put some warm food, peppered with a smile, in their stomachs.

Gods, if she's late.

“Where have you been?” Jeyne lets her in from the back entrance, and Brienne's begging eyes meets the lovely girl's ones. ”At least can you tell me if he's well? He is, good, now run upstairs and put on your work gown, Theon has told Robb you were helping Jon with the load of coal, but Jon is going to come back, so go. Go!”

The head-waitress pushes her, but climbing the stairs is made difficult by the descent of the girls, Margaery closing the line.

“Brienne?” Margaery nods and Elinor comes back to block the passage. “That's not the way it works, darling. I mean, no one judges you bad, because women, like men, have their necessities, but a wise girl never spends her night off her bed, risking to tarnish her reputation, and ours.”

“Margaery, please, things are not like you're painting them out.”

“Things are never like one paints them out, of course”, sneers Taena. “Mostly when the man is tall, almost enough tall I'd add, rich and unscrupulously handsome. Green eyes, long shining hair...”

“Him?” Margaery's voice drops to a slithering whisper. “Brienne, are you mad or stupid or whatever? That man is our enemy, can't you understand?”

“No, he isn't”, she replies, burning inside and outside, “he killed the snake, he...”

“He put the snake in the pantry, then he shoot at him”, Margaery says and Elinor hiccups, in a horrified wonder. “A Lannister is contorted and clever enough for planning such a hazardous game, and playing it before a tender, innocent lamb coming from the East. An awkward lamb dreaming for a golden, charming ram to come and change her in a fluffy, beautiful sheep.”

“Yes, an amazing sheep”, confirms Taena.

“An amazing... sheep,” Brienne can't help but repeat, incredulous. Elinor hiccups again, and Margaery seems on the verge to hit her cousin.

“Oh, Brienne”, the small queen of waitresses says, in a breath. “Your sarcasm is definitely out of place, since we're trying to help you.”

“Help -hic!- you.”

“Stop it, Ely. What I'm struggling to tell you, Brie, is that Mr. You-Know-Who's only virtue is a passable face without even a couple of those lovely, cured whiskers that make a man so... so... hic? Elinor, stop making the clown, please, we're having a very serious conversation about the difference between evil, golden-haired men and good, noble men...”

“With thin whiskers, and hidden knifes”, Brienne concludes, torn between a lingering incredulity and an increasing will to shake Margaery like a doll in order to put some sense in her, or make her shut up, at least.

“Calumnies, spread by the enemy. Mr. Blackwater is clearly a gentleman.”

“Hic!”

“For the Crone's sake, Margaery, Jon was there...”

“Jon's just a boy and a penniless helper, while Mr. Blackwater is a wealthy man who doesn't need Lannisters' tip to buy roses for... well, tastes are tastes.” Taena shares an accomplice look with a pink cheeked - and pink dreaming - miss Tyrell. The stairs are so narrow that Brienne is seriously risking to choke on rosewater, and yet, she has some few words to spend, maybe.

“Jon served in the army, as a captain, until he got sick of fighting the descendants of the dothraki horde, still armed of bows and arrows. If you'd wake up earlier in the morning and offer to carry a few tons of meat or wood with him, you could see the scars, on his chest. Five or six stabs, by his co-officers, when he prevented them to assault a camp of helpless women and children.” The words leave her mouth, softly, then she softly makes a step, then another. Nobody stops her, now, and when she finally gets upstairs, in the sewing room, where she finds Satin, who has heard nothing, thanking the Gods, being too immersed with the last bunch of blossoms that Jon has gifted her.

Brienne smiles. It's a good day, in the end: Satin is happy, Jaime's well, and the mattress is such a nice invention, as an enamored friend has just told her.

The dormitory ceiling is painted in a creamy white, with delicate, tiny birds peeping out idealized nests, made of grapes shoots and blue petals. According to Jeyne, a homage from the youngest Lannister, Tyrion - who conceived every single detail of the Stark chain of restaurants - to his bride.

Rolling on her belly, Brienne wonders how Jaime's twin can be so romantic while Jaime is so witty and sharp and unbearable - not when he's asleep, however. When his eyes are closed, his hair spreading on the pillow like a cloud of...

A knock on the door interrupts her revery. Two knocks, three, insisting, knocks. “Miss Storm? Miss Storm? Can I come in?”

“Of course. Make yourself at home, Mr. Stark”, bleats stupidly Brienne, from under the linen sheet.

The young man opens the door, then closes it, immediately.

“Miss Storm, you should have told me you're still abed.”

She closes again her eyes. “You haven't asked it.”

“Are you ill? Are you in that period of the month...”

“No, I'm well, thanks, and no, I'm not...”

“Ok, ok, ok, don't need to be too detailed about certain matters, miss Storm.” The voice is muffled by the door, and Brienne's laughs are muffled by both the door and the smooth linen of the pillow. She feels really an horrible girl and a heroine of the wild Westerlands, in the same time. “Well, if you're not ill, you should explain me why you aren't downstairs, along with all the other girls. I mean, it's an unpleasant precedent and seems a bit unfair, don't you think, miss Storm?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“What?”

The door opens, again, and Brienne recognizes the creaking sound of dandy shoes on the parquet and a chair, moved a bit too hastily. “I just said that I don't agree with you, Mr. Stark,” she explains, eyes imperturbably closed. If she keeps them well closed she can pretend to be in another room, a spare one, a man's room, with a few decorations and just one worn cowboy hat hung at a hook, on the left-hand side.

“Miss Storm, my father taught me to be patient, but you know, the patience of a man can't be infinite.”

“My father taught me to be honest and frank, so frankly I don't give a damn if your patience is almost done.” Brienne hears the man sucking in his breath. “Mine has finished this night, when I slept scarcely a couple of hours to vigil on a man - your good-brother, among other things - who was risking to die for having defended one of your brothers from the mustached scum you esteem so much. To be totally honest I've also to add that my patience was already at its minimum when I've been left to deal – the only one among all the other Ned's girls - with the most burdensome tasks. I'm strong, stronger than all your other employees and I don't mind to work a bit more, but a _thank you Brienne_ , or a _we're so glad to count on such a good worker like you Brienne_ would have been nice. I felt so demotivated, sometimes, that I've been often thinking about writing down a couple of lines to Mr. Eddard Stark, because I really don't think he'd like the way you rule this place. Who do you think you are? A fucking king? Not even my father is so stiff-necked, and I can ensure you he's prideful enough to claim of being a descent of the mythical ser Galladon of Morne and of the legendary Blue Knight. Ah, as you've obviously understood, I'm not a Storm, but a Tarth, the only daughter of Mr. Selwyn Tarth of Evenfall Hall, but I'd appreciate if you'd kept it like a confidence, sir.”

“A confidence, sure. I-is that all?” says Brienne's boss, with a thin, thin voice.

“No. You should apologize with Mr. Lannister and with Jon, obviously, But first, with miss Satin.”

“ _Miss_ Satin?”

“Miss. M-i-s-s. She should sleep upstairs, the sewing room is large enough to become her own chamber, until Jon will propose her to marry. Considering that it took him more than a year to give her some flowers, he may need some more time, and, in the meanwhile, it's not proper for them to share the same room. Satin is quite embarrassed about it, she doesn't want to... hurry things, and being marked out as a... well, she's gone through too much, when she was in Oldtown, so now she desires only a bit of respect and normality. Are you still following me?”

“Not missing a single word.”

“Good. Then, I must confess I found your clothes unfit for this city, and your hats, Gods, you shouldn't trust Mr. Greyjoy about hats, nor about introducing fish in the menu, Mr. Stark.”

“Anything else, miss patched trousers?”

“I was forgetting to tell you that it wasn't me who stole one of Mr. Poole's marmalade jars.”

“Alla. It has been miss Alla Tyrell. I should have known.”

“I won't tell the name of the girl who did it, I don't care if you'll withhold the sum from my pay or not. The fact is that the thief's really repented for having caused all that trouble and, I can grant it to you, she'll never do such a thing again.”

“I suppose a small jar of marmalade isn't going to be a problem, miss Tarth, but I'm glad to hear you've nothing to do with it. Grey is never wrong.” There's a taste of pure and sane relief in Mr. Robb Stark's tone that makes Brienne open her puffy eyes and brace on her elbows, an interrogative point written on her frowning brow.

“Grey? Who's that Mr. Grey, now?”

The boss chuckles. “Just a fellow who likes you, from the first sniff.” He whistles, and a few instants later an avalanche of fur and merriness jumps on Brienne's chest, starting to lick her face, freckles and crooked nose included. “Come on, Grey Wind, or the lady will think you're a true wild direwolf.”

The puppy feigns to obey, but only for a heartbeat. Brienne is delighted by his rough tongue. “Isn't he?”, she laughs, mindlessly, rubbing the huge dog on his woolly back. “I mean, he's big enough, and he has even the look of a wolf.” Robb Stark shrugs, but it's evident he thinks the same thing about Mr. Grey. “He's so lovely, why did you keep him hidden to all us girls, boss?”

“I didn't mean to scare you, or to lose my credibility. You know, I'm a boss and a boss...”

“... can't have a good, very good pet?” It's such a lovely monster, that one. Stale breath and moist nose, digging into her thick neck. “Mr. Stark, I know how hard is to be always... your father's heir.”

“I love my father.”

“So do I, but my life, my choices. King Bran's bill of rights guarantees the right of pursuing happiness, but its up to us to do that pursuit, I fear.” She yawns and smiles a tired smile, overwhelmed by Grey Wind's cuddles. Answering to a marriage ad seems no more a folly – she may have lied about her name, but her intentions were honorable, at least, and the valley, well, the valley is a dream that will remain a dream.

“Brienne?”

“Yes?”, her voice is drowsy. She's slowly, inexorably yielding to sleep, cradled by Grey Wind snoring.

“Take care of Mr. Grey. I have to talk to miss Satin.”

“Ok, boss”, Brienne manages to babble, under the pleasant weight of the greatest ball of furs and loveliness she has ever met. Then she must have fallen asleep, and dreamed of Mr. Stark thanking her, and, most of all, telling her that she can call him simply Robb, because she reminds him of a certain Arya Horseface. Horseface, with Brienne's jaw being squared like a plank – she promises herself and to Mr. Grey Fluff that, as soon as she'll wake up, she'll tell Jaime to stop haunting her dreams with his japes and his impossible, impossibly charming, irony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me for the "frankly, I don't give a damn" quote - I had to hear it from Brienne's lips, once in my life


	13. Chapter 13

The chair shrieks, so piteously. The pendulum utters its tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock and Strongboar shifts his weight, again. The chair shrieks, again, even more piteously.

The sausages in Jaime's dish reminds him of the elaborated hairstyle that Cersei is showing today onstage, defiant to any physics rules and constantly threatening to fall over some innocent customers, already prey of the ambitious woman's exploits. She's angry, dangerously angry, since Jaime has kindly told her to screw off for a while, making him definitively guilty of lese-majestée. Not that Cersei has ever been a gentle girl, but her current mood doesn't improve the saloon revenue, that's has never been so low. Sniffing the carrion reek, Mr. Spicer has already asked Jaime a meeting - wanting surely to offer him some sum to buy the Golden Hand and change it into a luxurious hotel or a shop or whatever else, as if Jaime might ever think about throwing his employees out on the street.

Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock. Strongboar sighs, the fourth sigh in less than a mid-hour - the only signals he's still alive. Jaime rolls his eyes, and notices a spiderweb. No spiders in sight. Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock. The porcelain dish has a small chip, similar to the spiderweb, partially hidden by the greasy sauce. The porcelain is white, with the unmistakable, translucent blue that only an artisan from Jinqui can create – a delicate nuance, feminine, almost girlish-like.

Slightly nauseated, Jaime pushes the dish forward, and, doing so, spills the glass on the tablecloth and on Lyle's clothes.

“Oh”, it's the only thing Lyle manages to say, when he realizes that his shirt is now a map of scattered red islands, tiny like freckles.

“Sorry.” Jaime says, his stomach secured in a vise. Thinking about freckles is not advisable, lately. “I can call for Senelle or Pya to wash it and...”

“I don't mind, Jaime. You should eat, though.”

Strongboar's dish is still untouched. “You should do the same.”

Lyle swallows. Twice. Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock.

“Come on, Lyle, that's not you. What's wrong?”, Jaime bursts out, exasperated. “Just spill the beans.”

“Jaime, forgive me.” The huge man seems almost a child, sometimes, mostly when he scratches his messy beard in the same way he used to scratch his crusts as a brat. “I betrayed you.” Another sigh. “I've bought a ticket for the party at the Ned's restaurant. I had to. To meet her, and apologize to her.”

“Her?”

“Miss Megga Tyrell.” Under the thick beard, Lyle goes shockingly red. “I-I may have kissed her, involuntarily, accidentally at the station.”

“Accidentally? Addam tells the same tale differently.”

“Addam is a asshole.” Lyle's really red, with stripes of purple, his brow glimmering for the many sweat drops. Sometimes it's really hard to stay serious in front of a friend.

“On that, you're perfectly right. He even blathered to me about that ticket of yours, precising it's one of those special tickets that grant the owner the right to dance with his elected dame. Not bad, you sly old boar.”

“Don't tell granpa.”

“He's going to the party, too.” Everybody is going to that fucking party – someone's eager to participate at the event, someone's simply eager not to displease brother Sandor, who's selling the tickets in front of the saloon, with Jaime's blessing and Cersei's curses. “It's all ok, Lyle. Old Sumner will like miss Megga, she's such a lovely girl. Don't worry, and have a drink.”

He refills his glass, and toasts it at his friend's luck. Lyle finally relaxes and drinks.

“Miss Megga is really the loveliest of all creatures. Even your girl is lovely, though.” Jaime spits his wine. “I mean, don't want to compare them, of course, Megga is Megga and Brienne is Brienne...”

“Don't say that name, again.”

“Which name? Brienne? Why? Addam says she loves you the way you love her and that you're waiting for her father to come in Silverhill in order to ask for Brienne's hand, so it's all limpid and honorable...”

Never entrust a confidential telegraph message in your best friend's filthy hands. Somehow Addam has managed to read even Tyrion's reply - but it's not that strange considering that the telegrapher's wife, Mrs. Jeyne Clifton, has always had a soft spot for slender men with copper hair.

“Her father's coming to carry her back home. Tied, gagged and shoved inside a trunk, if necessary, and if he'll be able to find a truck enough big to contain her. I doubt it, though.”

“And I doubt there's a trunk enough big to contain your stupidity!” Strongboar's hand hammers on the table, the sausages flying into the air... and never hitting the floor.

Both men jump on their feet, ridiculously stained with wine and grease, ridiculously stunned. Nor Jaime nor Lyle has heard the huge, wolfish monster entering into the dining room. He looks at them begging for another sausage, his tail being so thick that he moves the chairs now that he's shaking it, his yellow eyes as merry and brazen as his owner's ones.

“Can I?”, Robb Starks says, and moves in without even waiting for a reply, tailgated by an agitated Jeyne Westerling.

“Boss, I-I told him you were busy but this ...invader knows no boundaries, and that impossible dog of his.” Jaime has never seen Jeyne in such a “moist” state. “Look at me, he has licked all my new gown, and my arms and my hands, he covered me with drool. Mother will kill me!”

“I won't allow anyone to harm you, my lady”, Robb chuckles, mimicking a bow. This one must have taken after his mother, no chance Ned Stark might ever teased a girl that way. “About my puppy, well, here you are.”

“What's that?”, Jeyne asks, beaming as she takes a small book from the boy's hand, the window light falling softly on her shoulders.

“Just a few pictures taken when he was still a puppy. Scroll the pages swiftly and you'll see.” The girl makes a gasp, flushing, and she consigns the small book to Jaime. “Boss, look, it's _colored_ and _animated._ ” Her cheeks are deliciously pink, now, but she's only an inexperienced girl of eighteen or nineteen, like the wench - and girls are supposed to fancy blue-eyed boys holding pups. 

“Did you bore a sword and a furred cloak, in summer?” Strongboar asks, when it's his turn to see the modern trick.

“My father is a stickler for family traditions and family traditions include furs, swords and wolves, or wolf-like dogs”, Robb Starks gives in shrug, looking a bearded kid compared to the Crakehall imitation of a wardrobe, “My pup is the one that looks straight into the camera lens, I can ensure you he's fearless and very skilled in choosing the right people.”

“So, I suppose we should consider ourselves very honored to get such lovely gifts, Stark.” Jaime says, rubbing his hand on the trousers to get it clean from the monster's saliva.

“Yes, more or less.” Robb's smile has something that Jaime can't read, but it's not a mocking smile. It's a sincere one. “I'm glad to see you're well, Lannister. Hope you will join our little party, tomorrow, with Mr. Crakehall and other friends, if you'd like it, obviously.” The tickets have a tiny crown printed on it, that shines a bronze shine when the youth takes them out his wallet to put them on the table. “Please, before, saying no, let me finish the speech. Not that I've prepared any speech, till yestermorn I would have dismissed as crazy the idea of coming here, without invitation, to apologize to a Lannister, and yet. I do apologize, Mr. Lannister, I had no right to suspect you about the snake in the pantry or the night shoot, and please accept my thank for having saved Jon, my brother.” He reaches out his right hand.

Jaime stares at the guy, Jeyne stares at the guy, Lyle stares at the guy, for a time that the guy finds visibly unbearably long, judging from how nervously his fingers dig in his pet's smoke-gray fur. The monster is glad instead, and Jaime enjoys the weird silence for a while, a long and pleasant while, until the guy recalls that Jaime's right hand is still bandaged, and reaches out his left, studying carefully, very carefully, the wooden ceiling of the only rustic room in the building.

_Starks are not known for their wits,_ the gambler muses, wondering how Tyrion will survive his marital adventures with a girl who's probably has the same spirit of a weirwood tree, before spitting on his good hand and meeting Robb's one.

“Agh," Jeyne moans, but both Lyle and the young man smile - what's a little spit compared to the amount of droll coming out that sack of fur and fleas Robb dares to call puppy? Jaime feels still in debt with the guy, and he's beginning to think that, maybe, it's not totally a bad idea, the Starks' party, he can't leave Strongboar in Addam's claws, he'd like so much to see Old Sumner melting in tears at the sight of his grandson dancing with the girl he loves and Pod has told him that the blue silk has ended in the right hands and has been used for the right dress, for the right we - someone.

"So, it seems you're going to accept the invitation." Robb Starks adds, and Jaime realizes that the tickets have mysteriously get in his palm. 

"Just to have a look," he replies, dryly, "and to keep an eye at the situation. In case the snake's cousin decides to check where the hell his kin has hidden."

"About that, don't worry. Mr. Grey will care about the girls, as Brienne always says", the stupid boy replies, cackling and rubbing his idiotic companion on four paws.

"B-Brienne?"

"Brienne, the tall girl, I guess you know her. She's quite fond of our brave Mr. Grey, I'd say, and it's not an unrequited love judging how Mr. Grey reciprocates...", the voice fades, becoming a murmur "... her cuddles. Hey, Lannister, are you sure to be ok?" 

"Jaime?"

"Shut up, Lyle", Jaime has to sit, an entire hive of bees buzzing in his ears. Even the deflagrations and Jeyne's scream barely reach him, but the blood seeping through Robb's chest is a red so vivid that it makes him reborn, and reborn a lion, again - his right hand answering with a stinging stab, but also with the usual quickness and the usual precision, as the blood stains found on the ground, outside, prove.

With a few, angry hits, Jaime drops the glass fragments left on the window frame, then looks back, still doubtful about whom the shot was really directed to, and his gaze meets the monster's bright, accusing eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this chapter an excuse to show baby Grey Wind GIF? Yes, it is. Fluff is like water: without it, things wither


	14. Chapter 14

One shoot. Two shoots.

From the saloon. From Jaime's saloon.

Her feet fly on the steps of the staircase, then on the smooth floor of the diner, but before she can get outside a man grasps her arm - a very tall man, and very wrinkled.

“It's Mr. Robb!”, someone shouts from the yard, behind the gingham curtains.

Something deep, something hidden in Brienne's core melts with relief, but relief comes with the bitter prickle of guilt, tugging her throat tight as she glimpses Satin struggling to hold a wide-eyed Jon.

“They killed Mr. Stark!”

Her legs go weak under the weight of the news, the maid would have let herself go on her knees, if not for Mr. Crakehall, still holding her forearm, gentle but resolute. “No, it can't be”, she whispers to the man, warming herself in the comprehension offered by his soft gaze, being no more able to look in the direction of Jon. She can still hear his growls, though, and the sobbing of Alysanne and some other girl she can't name.

“Let me, Satin. Let me go”, Jon's voice is so husky to be almost unrecognizable.

“Not without me.”

“You stay.”

“NO.”

“Be quiet!”, old Mr. Crakehall blurts. “Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. Come on, girls, I know you're hurt and confused, but we still don't know anything for sure.” With a last soft glance to Brienne,

the rancher leaves her to reach for Jon, looking straight in his gray eyes. “About you, boy, come with me, and believe to your own eyes, not to some road crier.”

***

The velvet edge of Satin's brand-new gown raises small puffs of dust as she follows Mr. Crakehall, Jon and her to the saloon. Underneath the candid apron, Brienne's heart is trapped in a net of barbed wire, but hopeful. The light in Jaime's eyes when they enter his chamber gives her even more hope - his sudden smile, soft and bright like a porcelain sun, reassures her that everything is going to be ok, and soon. 

Jon bumps into her in the hurry to get at the side of the bed where Robb is lying, pale, but conscious, making an odd face which is half a grimace half an apologetical smile, as if he's a child caught with his fingers in the jam jar. Mr. Grey is at his master's feet, attentive, whilst a lovely girl is pressing a cloth on Robb's shoulder, her dark eyes filled with care and concern.

 _Jeyne, she's Jeyne westerling_ , the maid recalls.

Jeyne is so pretty, and Robb seems so at ease with her. Even Jon grins, now, an event, his hand in Satin's one. The room is the same, the bed is the same, the chair where Jeyne is seated is the same chair where Brienne has spend the most tormented hours of her life and yet it's all changed. The sweet softness hanging in the air now that the afternoon mildness spreads in the room is a softness that would have been absurd in the sullen light of the morning. Or maybe it's a softness she's not destined to feel and that's all.

Perhaps it's for the best.

The likes of Brienne, well... It's surely for the best, as Septa Roelle says.

A few light strokes on Mr. Grey's snout and she gladly takes her leave, as soon as the maester, a shy guy with a prominent belly, comes in with Mr. Crakehall’s grandson.

Smiling a coffee stained smile, the old rancher offers Brienne his arm and she accepts it, grateful of having a valid excuse to ignore the identical gesture coming from Jaime. Not that she doesn't appreciate Jaime's politeness, but his closeness is something she can't endure. Not in that room, not now that his green eyes betray an inner turmoil and an embarrassment from which she's eager to release him. 

_"I don't know why I am so very shy,_   
_I always was demure..."_

Cersei's voice and Pod's music fills the void among the tables in the huge hall, more crowded of half-naked essosi goddesses of chalk than of customers.

 _"I never knew what silly lovers do,  
No flirting I'd endure, i_ _n all my life I've never kissed a man_ _"_

The song words crawl up Brienne's spine, and she stiffens under the mocking glare of the chanteuse, crowned with a tiara of red feathers and scornful black lace. But it's all in her mind, she can't believe that Jaime might ever talked of what has happened in the valley - what hasn't happened, actually, 'cause nothing relevant has happened, actually. It's all a figment of her imagination, of her frustration. 

Then Mr. Crakehall keeps opens for her the swinging doors of the saloon and the sun - the evening sun going down in the valley - puts her out of her misery, the gloaming wrapping her and her distress in a friendly embrace.

***

Business as usual.

No one will impede the Ned's girls to have their party - so a bandaged and merry Robb has decided from his convalescent bed, and Margaery is leading her troops through silk and taffeta, with all the enthusiasm of her eighteen years. For once, Brienne's glad to wash the floors 'till they become lucid as a silver plate - the hardest is the work, the less she has time to brood on little, meaningless things. Like finding the way for returning a certain packet.

What's really strange is that, notwithstanding all, the general merriness is influencing the clumsy maid till the point she's almost happy to have a chance of dancing... of seeing the other girls dance, that is.

Hours fly, the girls' chatting is growing more and more thrilled and she can't find the way to sneak into the dormitory without being involved in some juicy quarrels - because the room is not that big, the girls' luggages are something Mr. Eddard Stark and his smart son-in-law haven't fully forecasted and, from time to time, lightenings crack in the air - when Elinor wants a ribbon that Meredyth strongly claims as hers, when Alla starts crying because Megga has burned a few of her brown curls with an iron too hot...

In the end, Alla weeps and sniffs so loud that Brienne manages to get her packet, without being noticed. A bundle of borrowed clothes, a gilded gun. Nothing that might interest the girls, however. 

It interests the saloon queen, unfortunately.

“See, my darlings, quite a run of Ned's girls we're having today”, the chanteuse says to the other dancers, her emerald eyes running up and down the mannish body of the maid from Tarth.

“Was there another matrimonial ad in some paper, miss Brienne-too-tall?”

“Look, miss Cersei, we hardly know each other, so suppose we keep it that way”, she answers, ready to ready to turn on her heels. She doesn't want troubles with Cersei and the other employees of the saloon.

“Just a minute”, Cersei's tone admits no refusal. “Let's talk a bit about the little party you and the other waitresses are having tonight.”

“It's a big party”, breaks in Margaery, coming from the outside, panting, as if she has just climbed a snowy peak, instead of having carried a few garlands for the feast. One garland, to be exact, one small, precious, unique garland with a glittered red bow, sparkling like a new born star.

“A great party”, adds Elinor, hurrying to flank her lovely cousin, followed by Taena and by a rush of Tyrell girls.

“The greatest party ever.” The dark-haired woman declares, her daring eyes fixed to... Cersei's breast.

Brienne blinks, and wonders if the first night she spent in the city, when Taena asked to sleep in her bed implying she was feeling lonely... _Nah. Impossible,_ she decides, quickly. Brienne's certainly not the kind of girl that can attract a beauty like Taena, or anyone else. Her tits are just a joke, while Cersei's instead...

The showgirl is wearing a corset even underneath her night dress, and what a dress. Plumes, black lace mixed sagaciously with a tender pink satin. She swans down the stairs, all sophisticated coiffed hair and arched eyebrows. By comparison, Margaery, Elinor and the others are ugly ducklings wreathed in print calico gowns with puffy shoulders - and Cersei knows it.

“Yeah, the greatest party for women with the greatest feet of Westeros, Essos and even Notoryos, for what I can see”, the woman says, haughty, and Brienne smells a storm in the air. A bad one. “About this _feast_ , don't you think you should stick to dishwashing, candy girls? You know, we're minding our own business.”

“Suppose you stick to your own profession”, replies Margaery, rightly outraged. For all Brienne knows, Margaery has never washed a dish in her life, her hands being candid and smooth like a porcelain from Yi-Ti.

“Oh, our little sugar doll has opened her painted mouth, and she's so sweet to give you cavities.” Cersei cackles, opening her arms to show the gilded and crimson hall, and the stage. “Our profession is entertainment, see.” She hisses, her eyes green and cold like emeralds.

"And we don't like competitors", the woman behind Cersei states.

"Ah. That's the point", shouts Margaery, triumphant. "You're afraid of us."

"Margaery, please...", Brienne begins, and it's too late. She's caught in the middle of the storm and something hard as a fake marble statue hits her back.

Dazed, on her knees, she senses someone's arms around her waist and a moan. 

"Come on, Pod, let her to me." Other arms, stronger. Strong enough to lift Brienne on her feet, again. "Here, wench, come. Can you walk?"

She nods, her eyes running all around, looking for her packet. She gets to see only Margaery, hands closed around an arranged cudgel.

The people portrayed in the painting hang on the walls seem very impressed by the display of the short girl's force, or by the girl swinging on the chandelier. The monster howling on the Myrish carpet look very alike a great hound with the heads of Cersei and Taena, instead.

Finally Brienne finds her bundle: it's still in her hands and she handles it to Jaime. He doesn't take it, but makes her hunch her shoulder and recover under a huge billiard table, shooting her an interrogative glance.

 _Later_ , she thinks, clings to her packet and rests her aching head on his shoulder, refusing to keep her eyes open and look at the disaster. The so much feared closeness isn't not what Brienne has expected it to be... there's no pity, or mock, in Jaime's soft presence, in the touch of his hands. Just peace. A isle of peace in a world enraged by war.

It takes a while, an Addam, two Jeynes and, mostly, a Grey Wind to restore the peace even in the saloon. No winners, no glory, Margaery's loosened curls seem to whisper... 

... but for what Brienne has learned about her and all the Ned's girls, they'll be again on their heeled shoes, soon, in time for the greatest party ever done in the dozing city of Silverhill. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cersei’s song is Angela Lansbury’s “How’d you like to spoon with me?” – from the 1946 MGM movie “Till the Clouds Roll By”. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIsmINWdkVQ


	15. Chapter 15

His protests fall on deaf ears. Addam's excited like the girls that have half destroyed the saloon and stubborn like the wench, if not more. A smile crosses Jaime's face, as he recalls Robb Stark's blatant dismay at the news and that strange sensation of warm spreading from that point of his chest, where her head has been resting for a while. However, it's just fault of Addam's mulishness, of Strongboar's shyness - mixed to Jaime's own curiosity and, of course, a bit of _savoir faire,_ tipical of Lannisters – if he decides to go to the ball.

If Robb Stark himself has deigned to gift Jaime a special ticket, well, it's would be inelegant to refuse the invitation, that's plain. Jaime's on his feet before he has even time to think of what he's going to do when he's got there, in that stupid restaurant filled with colored lanterns, garlands and welcoming girls in chiffon dresses. 

Rose, yellow, silvery-white and even light blue, but a wrong blue - a blur of pastel, good-looking dames, well educated, and no wenches in sight.

“Over there,” says Addam, with one of those grins that put on display his white teeth and his never-ending smugness.

There, but where? There's a huge vase, full of flowers, in the direction pointed by Addam, and nothing else if not... a puffy cloud of an interesting color, timidly peeping out behind the pot. The shined leather shoes of a slender man are moving in long strides towards it, and the man wear a brazen smile, a dishonest face and an old scar. It’s enough to hit Jaime’s nerves, already stressed by the sight of so many people, all together, all smiling.

“Get rid of that one with the red vest”, he orders, waving a hand to greet a very smoothed and very nervous Jon, holding the arm of one of the prettiest ladies of the party, dark-haired and dark-eyed.

“Which one? Hunt?”, Addam asks, scratching his chin. “Ok, but then the rest it’s up to you. I’m here for dancing, Jaime, and I’ll dance. All night long.”

The copper haired scum winks at him, giggling with expectation – a few moments later, the incautious man named Hunt has his moment of glory, when he’s lifted by a stout cowboy working in the Marbrand ranch and merrily dragged to the corner of liquors by a bunch of other good westermen.

The pat of encouragement Jaime gives then to a terrified Strongboar is a bit more enthusiastic than he'd want it to be – not that Lyle would ever complain, the rancher being completely lost for the clever fellow club since the moment he has entered the feasting hall, his ugly face transfigured by an idiotic grin, his moist eyes chained to a pretty bosomed girl who smiles back to Lyle. How a man can grow so smitten to forget his own dignity, it's a true mystery for Jaime.

As the ball begins in a confusion of cheers and twirling gowns, Addam comes back just to vanish again, this time in the arms of a lovely brunette, beginning to sway across the crowded hall, in a queer dance, a new one – and an utmost scandalous one.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ned's girls party, enjoy it and don't be shy, please”, miss Jeyne Poole's words follow Jaime as he turns around the big vase, to find relief from the dancing fever spreading in the surroundings. “As Miss Elinor Tyrell and Mr. Addam Marbrand are courteously showing you, we're going to teach you a brand-new dance coming from the East, the first dance where a fellow puts his arms around the lady's waist.” _That_ 's a surprise, and behind the vase, there's another surprise. Here she is, the wench, eyes widened like at the station, cheeks openly defying a tomatoes chest. “So, our beloved guests, find a partner and sway, light as feathers! But before that, let me thank you, again, in the name of all the Stark umployees, because with the money we've collected by selling the tickets, Silverhill will have soon its Sept back!” Many applauses, while the huge brown shadow of Brother Sandor nods, visibly glad. Maybe he's even smiling - hard to tell, since his face is the usual ruin. “Now, all right, girls, choose your partner, line up and demonstrate... the _waltz_ ”, concludes miss Poole, and the dance demons takes possession of men and women.

It’s like a circus, where rough cowboys wearing their best suits play the part of the tamed lions. Even Strongboar join in the dance, with the plump girl of his dreams, and he looks happy and clumsy like a toddler.

“The waltz. What an absurd name, for a dance”, Jaime comments with the vase of flowers, that is surely less stiff than the wench, now that she has hunched her shoulders even more, persisting in her hilarious attempt of hiding herself. As if she weren't a pole of six and a half feet, wrapped in a ton of blue silk. “I doubt it will resist for more than a year or two.”

The tiles on the floor must have something unique or, in every case, some interesting characteristic, judging from how Brienne keeps observing them. People pass by, swirling, stumbling, laughing, skin flushed because of the stunning proximity of suits and ball gowns.

“It can't last, I mean. Can you see them, wench?” She tilts her head, acknowledging Jaime's presence, so finally he can check, and find the confirmation of his assumption. The blue is the right blue, and it goes well with her frown. “Look, it's not just putting your hand on your lady's waist, it's pulling her to you. Cheek brushing cheek. Quite indecent, I'd say”, Jaime claims, his fingers itching badly inside the pocket.

“Oh, no, it isn't. Not with Septa Nysterica controlling the situation”, she replies, sullen, crimson blotches dancing the new stupid dance on her collarbone, just above the embroidered neckline, that is not too low, not too high - the wench seems almost have a breast deign to be called breast, in the end, with that simple dress of hers. No ridiculous puff sleeves, no glitters, just a pattern of tiny moons, blue on blue, softening the edges of the fabric, suggesting a smoothness, a creamy daintiness underneath the smooth fabric. The one who has sewed Brienne’s dress hasn't done such a terrible work. Not at all.

“I see,” he says, forcing his eyes back on the hall and barely containing a laugh when he notices how the Septa is joyfully keeping the situation under control, just a few feet from him, the pot and the wench.

“See, wench, the wonders of civilization? Assuming I like to learn this new, odd dance that _you_ find perfectly normal, I should prepare myself to some lovely, teaching kicks from a purple dressed Septa. How a charming perspective – not that I had all those expectations, from a dance probably coming from some lost rock in the Narrow Sea.”

She inhales so long and deeply Jaime would swear she might explode, like the frog in Maester Crow’s old tales. “It's not like that. There are rules and steps, that need to be followed. Respected.”

“Rules,” he gripes. Jaime’s simply sick of rules. Of respect. Of the wench, most of all.

“Rules”, she repeats, and his patience runs out. He steadies his spine, to face the unbearable girl, no matter if she’s taller, and heavier – maybe stronger in certain, particular, certainly rare, circumstances.

“Ok, wench. I’m ready. Show me.”

“Show me what?” The alarm makes her eyes go large as Jaime’s smile.

“The rules, the steps, the hell you wish,” he explains, with a snort, his hands ready to welcome hers.

“No.”

“No? And what about your mission?”

“M-mission?”

“The honest, excellent, hygienic, cleanly, prompt and cheerful service at all time. I’d underline the word cheerful.”

Her mouth opens in a “O” then closes itself, then opens again. “How do you know…”

“You forget your boss is still under my roof, in my own bed, to be precise, and he has the sad tendency to be a little too in love with duty and steaks and proposals about creating a society, a sort of hotel, resort, restaurant, all together.” Jaime rolls his eyes and stretches his hands out further, palms up, as she gapes again. “So, what about this blessed prompt and cheerful service of yours, wench? But maybe you can’t dance, have you ever danced a waltz?”

“I have.” Of course, she has. She’s used to live in damned castle, plenty of musicians and guests, for Gods’ sake. Maybe she has danced with some jerk, but she has never been kissed, before Jaime kissed her, he’ll hellish sure about it. He swallows, a very sure and very male swallowing, worth of the wild lands in which he has grown up when the wench takes an angry step towards him. “You should place your hand here, sir.” Gingerly, she grabs his left hand and accompanies it to her waist. “The other one, you should…”

“Clasp it to yours, isn’t it?” Jaime ends her sentence, curiously enjoying the smoldering beneath his touch, the bodice and the silk gown being too thin to stop the pleasant heat spreading from her. He can almost sense how much Brienne’s skin is burning, mostly when she winds her free arm around his shoulders, always keeping a very _respectable_ distance between them. 

“Now, wait and listen to the music. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.” The wench’s voice is soft, and she’s surprisingly light and self-sure when she shows him the first steps. “You just have to go with the flow, the music. You lead, remember.”

Jaime leads, awkward for the first time in his life, glad to be not too close to the other dancing couples. He leads, uncertain, slow, at the beginning, growing more confident at every step, and when he recalls not to look down at his feet - a common mistake any dumb beginner makes – he finds himself discovering, again, and again, the astonishing gentleness of her eyes. Like the sea, they’re never the same blue. Like the sea, they’re never enough. 

“Shit”, he curses under his breath, wincing as he feels his stupid boot on Brienne’s. He’s too aware of how she winces as well, though she doesn’t voice her discomfort. “Sorry, Brienne.” He says, husky, sheepishly. 

“I’m strong enough to bear you, I fear”, the wench’s quick to answer, her gaze lingering in his.

“Is that a proposal, wench? For old, decadent gamblers can be very heavy, sometimes”, he jests, still hoarse, and her lips curve up, just a bit, cutely sieged by freckles.

 _More than a bit_ , he says to himself, recuperating all his confidence. The music goes on, their hands are clasped and Jaime dares, he has to. Trains go fast, too fast, and as the moon will leave her place to the sun, her father will arrive, to bring her back in the place she does really belong, as it's right - but now it’s not time to brood about it. It’s time for a waltz, their waltz.

“Oh, no, no, no”, Brienne complains, her eyes bright, her breaths pleasantly warm and short when, laughing a bittersweet laugh, he leads her in the middle of the dancing hall, where the small earrings she’s wearing burst in a sudden glint, kissed by the huge chandelier lights.

 _Silver earrings have been a good choices, white gold and sapphires earrings would be even a better choice_ , Jaime decides, tightening his hold on her waist and pulling her even closer to him. Why not? Only for one dance, the first, and the last one.

“Are you ready to impress them all, my lady?” He whispers in her ear, and waits just the time to carve deeply in his mind the sound of her heart thundering against his chest, even more loud than his, then he follows the music.

And he makes her swirl, and it all goes well, perfectly, the gown wheeling around her in a halo of silk and grace, one, two, three, four, they sway and spun again, together, Jaime needs no more counting the steps, the movements coming now natural for the both of them, they simply keep swinging round, intensely, heavenly, cheek to cheek, wrapped in a mist of lights and notes and faces of people they do know or they don’t, who cares, as long as they have room enough to dance, and spun, the eternity at their feet.

“Anybody wants our tickets?”, a certain voice says, haughty, and the music dies. 

Abruptly.

Vanished, all of sudden, like a gambler's lucky streak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Ray Bolger is Hyle Hunt!


	16. Chapter 16

The music ends, all of sudden. They stop, too, breathless, their hands still clasped together, their fingers loosely gripping, now, but staying grip, though. The realization startles Brienne, but she doesn’t hint at moving and losing the magic of the moment.

“See, darlings, our boss is so generous to have offered himself to teach a cow how to dance.”

Paling, Jaime immediately untangles himself from Brienne, looking ready to reply something to the venom the woman has spread, breaking the spell. The maid waits, her breath trapped in her chest, underneath the bodice Satin has carefully padded out, she waits until it’s clear there’s nothing to wait for, then turns her back to Jaime and to his Cersei, waddling back to a corner of the hall, where mister Crakehall and brother Sandor stand so tall that she’d seem less a joke, for once.

“For Gods’ sake, mister Lannister, don’t look at me that way”, she hears again Cersei’s high voice, and her chuckles. “I swear you we’re not here to cause troubles, the girls and I just want to have fun, that’s why we have picked up the first rags we’ve found in the wardrobe… to have a look, for it’s our turn to go slumming, isn’t it?”

The first rags found in the wardrobe. Brienne has never seen such a sumptuous, stunning dress. Even the color of it, it’s a shade she has never seen, a shocking pink, unnatural but gorgeously fit for Cersei’s soft, perfectly white skin. Diamonds spark cold on her long, thin neck – cold like the showgirl’s smirk.

All the women in the dancing hall are splendid, but Cersei… she’s breath-taking and somehow this is an outrage that someone Brienne knows won’t forgive, unfortunately.

“Slumming? How a curious choice of terms. However, you and the other saloon girls are welcome”, says Margaery, outstepping in her white-and-silver ball gown, to take Cersei's tickets. 

“Find a partner, if you can, and enjoy the waltz.”

Satisfaction tinges Margaery’s tone, as she curtseys, graceful, without leaving the arm of the man she was dancing with before Cersei’s arrival. All the other Ned’s girls, except Brienne, follow her example. They smile, false, empty smiles, glued to their occasional partners. Practically, the only men left free in all the hall are brother Sandor in his brown robe and Jaime, now leaning on the wall, wearing a dark expression. Brienne is quick to drift her gaze away, trying not to think how her hand - the big, freckled hand he was holding in his - feels a bit colder, now.

“All right, then.” Cersei replies, well aware of her charm. She walks slowly, almost solemnly, though the great room, her long eyelashes fluttering frantically from man to man, while Margaery scrutinizes with her nut eyes every little detail of the new comers, every possible threat of treason.

“Come on, darlings, go ahead and choose a partner, whoever you want.” The blond goddess commands, stopping in front of a young man to poke softly at his bulging chin with the handle of her huge pink feathered fan. “I’ll bet you’re glad to see me, Bucky-boy,” Cersei says, languid.

“I’m desolated, I’ve already asked miss Crane for the next dance.”

“Oh, what a pity.” Cersei twists on herself, the dress wrapping her tightly like a second skin. “Hello, mister Marbrand. Dancing?”

“I’m sure he’d like it”, breaks in Elinor Tyrell. “Unfortunately, he slipped, before, and now he has a very bad leg.”

“Well, in truth, I’d like to…” Addam begins, but Elinor stamps the heel of her pretty shoes on his foot, making him growl. “Ok, I’ve a very bad leg, _now_. Sorry, Cersei,” he concludes, still grimacing.

“Another time”, a cowboy says, as Cersei approaches him with a blinding smile.

The saloon girls look with disappointment and dismay a few other men shun Cersei, instead of meeting her glance, or theirs own. The same people who cheer at them in the saloon, now treat them like ghosts. Cumbersome ghosts. Notwithstanding all, Brienne’s heart aches for them - she knows what it means being invisible and, at the same time, too visible, she knows how deep a rejection can cut you. She knows it too well.

“Enough”, Jaime roars, a cold fury painting his eyes of a deep, dark green. “This farce has already lasted too long.” He reaches his employees and leads them to the exit door, not caring about Jeyne Poole’s pleas about remaining.

“Now, I recognize you, boss”, Cersei states, grabbing Jaime’s arm.

“I feel better myself. Now, let’s go where we do belong.” On the threshold, Jaime turns, but not for looking at her. She’s such an idiot to think he may ever have turned for her, to greet her. He speaks to the crowd, instead. “Any of you gentlemen like to join us and have a little recreation?”

A nod from Margaery and the music starts again. No one follows Jaime and his girls, and a hand stronger than hers impede Brienne to move, to go behind him, where her incredibly stupid feet would bring her.

“Miss Tarth, isn’t it?”, the holy brother says. “Don’t be angry with Robb Stark if he confessed me your true name, it’s not easy to hide something from me, you know.”

“I’m not angry, good brother,” she replies, her gaze still on the door that has swallowed Jaime.

“Only sad. Or disoriented, maybe. Things change fast, so fast. Have you realized what has just happened here? This night the male population of Silverhill, for the first time, turned down a wild time in favor of a good time. In favor of the little dream they host beneath those rough, tanned skins. Always the same dream: a cabin, a woman, some noisy brats. I had the same dream, once.”

“Everybody needs to feel loved, maybe, and not only for the time of a song”, she replies in a murmur.

“Yes, child.” The eyes of the tall man are kind, in a face that hasn’t seen kind times. “Silverhill will have soon his Sept, and maybe a school, if the Gods above will inspire an honest girl to become the teacher of a bunch of tiny cowboys and cowgirls.” He makes out an odd sound, that seems almost a sigh. “Things change, and it’s a blessing. The problem is that people don’t change just as fast. Generally, they don’t change, at all. You can get them the way they are, or let them go.”

“Let them go?”

“Sometimes it’s necessary, child. But don’t linger here to listen at a broken man when all the other girls are flowing outside.” The holy brother pushes her towards Satin, and Satin takes Brienne’s hand, giggling.

“The bonfires, Brie. Let’s go outside the city and have a few good bonfires.”, she explains, lovely in her yellow gown, embellished with white lace and blue chiffon orchids. “There’s no trouble or bad omen that can resist a bonfire, they say, but the truth is that you can sneak among the shadows and talk and kiss… About kisses, where have you hidden your golden boy?”

Satin is right. It’s easy sneak out in the darkness, and find a morceau of peace. The night is warmed by the bonfires, not too far from the point she has chosen for resting, and reflecting. As if Brienne has options on which reflecting - certain things cannot be one-sided, it’s plain. She hears footsteps, but she doesn’t mind about them. Probably one of the newly formed couples, seeking a soft alcove in the tall grass of the prairie. 

In the distance, the Sapphire’s Lake is shimmering under the starry vault. It’s so wonderful and quiet, she can think herself elsewhere - it’s a sweet and quite harmless occupation, in the end.

“Is it a privilege, wench, isn’t it?” Her heart threatens to stop, definitely, as Jaime emerges from the dark, with no more suit and tie, the sleeves of his candid shirt rolled up his toned arms. “Sitting here, alone, admiring the valley. Quite a beautiful sight, I’d say.” Even at that distance, the lights of the fires on the hill accentuate the golden reflection of his mane and of his skin.

“Beautiful, indeed”, she answers, idiotically, feeling the flush warm her neck and cheeks. “You scared me,” she accuses, dragging her gaze back to the valley.

“Am I that scary, wench?”, he laughs. “Normally gals don’t find me that scary, but you’re quite an extraordinary exemplar, aren’t you?”

“I am. Extraordinary.” She gets back on her feet, hastily. “Freakish, someone would add.”

“That’s how you broke your nose, Brienne? Fighting the assholes who tried to let you forgetting how extraordinary you are?” He looks at her, he looks inside hers. “About the evil things Cersei has said, I apologize, for not having intervened.”

“You weren’t supposed to intervene.”

“I like to think I was supposed to, instead, and I should have defended you. I should have behaved differently, in many occasions. Now it’s late.”

“Late?” Brienne asks, hesitant. A bit hopeful, the Others take her.

“Yes. I lost a couple of battles, and the war, miss Tarth.” In this light his smile seems ever whiter, almost rueful. “The gingham curtains and the flower pots get won, tonight. Don’t blame the fellows of Silverhill, however, if they wish a hearth, a little house with its own cretonne curtains and some blossoms in the yard.”

He talks as if nothing can touch him, no lines marking his forehead - but he’s lying, Brienne feels it.

“You mean you're giving up?” She asks, with reluctance. She doesn’t want to believe he’s ready to yield, not when there are so many ways to settle things.

“Not exactly.” He shifts again his gaze where the valley is supposed to be, a few clouds hiding the moon and, with that, the valley from his tormented eyes of emerald. “There's an ancient mining town, the Rock, about 100 miles from here. The town of the grandfather of my grandfather. The mines are just full of spiders, probably, but there’s a sort of port, too. Miners, sailors, tough people, still reluctant to be civilized. That's where the Golden Hand's planning to move.”

“When?” The maid almost chokes on that simple word. Needles, she has needles pinning her tongue to her palate.

“Tomorrow morning, the breakfast train.”

Tomorrow. Her travel to Silverhill has been filled with tomorrows. Now they look as if they’re here to stay, already changed in a row of bleak, hollow, wasted yesterdays.

“Is that what you came up here to tell me?”, it’s all Brienne manages to say, and it’s such a small thing.

“Yes.”

“Oh. What do you expect me to say?”

“I don't know. I guess I hoped you'd be glad. It might make it easier for me to leave.”

“All right, then, I'm glad.” Rage shows Brienne its acuminate fangs, but rage is always better than… other. It chews you alive all the same, but it hurts less. She starts walking, irked, following him towards the few city lights. “I only wish you'd left a long time ago.”

“So do I. Maybe it wouldn't have happened then.”

“What?” 

“Meeting you, wench.” His voice is sharp, his quick glance isn’t. She’d preferred it to be sharp, in truth. It would be easier.

“Yes, that was bad, wasn't it? Writing each other, meeting each other - two people as far apart as we are.”

“Far apart. For once, you’re right, miss Tarth,” he replies, dryly, his steps long and inexorable. “It’s something I haven’t planned. Not that way, and it’s a mess.” His curls shine more timidly than usual, when Jaime shakes his head. “Now, for the first time in my life, I've got things to remember.”

“I take it that you don't like memories, Mr. Lannister.”

“Memories don't pay off. They keep you awake nights.”

Her heart skips a beat. “Will you be awake many nights, Jaime?”

“Every night, Brienne,” he replies, and for an endless instant he seems on the verge to say more, to do more, to stop walking and reach out for her, maybe, and pull her in his arms. Obviously, it’s just another illusion. “It’s not that bad, I mean, for a gambler, staying awake all night”, he goes on, smirking, his long strides covering quickly the silvery path till the first wooden buildings. “You know, wench, I am what I am, while you, you’re someone, somewhere else.”

“No, I’m not…”

“I wrote your father, and now he has finally arrived”, he interrupts her, leaving her breathless. “With his private locomotive and wagons, travelling even at night. He’s waiting for you at the saloon.”

“How you dared to… how? Why?” Brienne has stopped, her wounded words bouncing on his muscular back, now. Jaime doesn’t even feign at stopping, at facing her, his silhouette dark against the lights of the saloon and of the restaurant, now in sight. Such brilliant lights, swaying like dancers in the night.

Swaying like flames.

“Mother save us”, she says, and Jaime looks at her, then at the Ned’s House, engulfed in a raging fire.

“Don’t you move”, he tells her, swearing loudly, and even if she has started running before he has, the dress makes her particularly clumsy.

Quicker and more agile, Jaime reaches the diner for first, rushes into it - and she runs behind him, no matter how many times he scowls and shouts at her. Inside, it’s a hell, so hot the silk sticks to her skin, already slick with sweat.

The flames are devouring everything, the tables, the chairs - the garlands having become ardent flowers, red and yellow - there’s nothing that can be saved, no more, except their own lives. They’re alone in the crumbling building, the girls still singing and dancing under the moon, safe. Jaime must have got to the same conclusion, since he offers no opposition when she takes her hand with hers, using the free one to cover her mouth – she’s coughing and he’s coughing, too, every sound they make being swallowed by the roaring beast that is trying to cut off the only way out. When the main window cracks in a thousand pieces, the breeze coming from the night is sweet like a caress and when they finally get outside, the first breath is a painful delight and Jaime’s beautiful even covered with ashes, his hair stuck to his brow.

“Jaime… the clothes you borrowed me, your gun, your letters, they’re lost. I-I’m sorry, so sorry”, she utters, her chin trembling like jelly.

“Never, never known someone stupid and stubborn like you”, he murmurs her, his jaw clenched while he rubs his face on her shoulder, his hands traveling on her back, restlessly, as if he’s doubting she’s here and she’s whole, while Brienne stands still, quiet, simply holding him tight. There’s a lot of people, now, probably all the city is crowding to assist at the ruin of the Ned’s House. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to break their embrace. She doesn’t want to let him go.

“Brienne.”

She recognizes the voice, she recognizes the gentle firmness of the touch on her shoulder blade. She’d recognize them everywhere.

“Brienne, sweetheart.” Her father wraps his thick arms around her, when Jaime pushes her away, kindly, mercilessly. Tears fill her eyes, run down her cheeks and they taste of salt and soot. “Don’t you worry, I’m here, sweet child of mine. It’s all finished. We’ll be soon back in Tarth.”

All finished. A pot explodes, the freshly repainted porch collapses with a deafening lament and, in a few moments, it’s all over - the air soaked with tears and smoke.


	17. Chapter 17

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven is the perfect number,_ thinks Cersei, letting her gaze linger on the perfectly arranged trunks and on her room. The room that was hers, in truth.

Now that he had the city at his feet, the boss has decided, incredibly, to leave the city and gift all the building to those waitresses in sad, blue gowns, as if he was liable of… what? Of being the stupidest of all Lannisters? The most… honorable?

The thought almost chokes Cersei - what a waste. The only thing that gives her relief is that they’re leaving behind everything and everyone, freakish blonds included, aimed to reach the Rock, the fabulous mining place, where even the river water tastes of gold, Madame Maggy used to say. For a change, Cersei feels really satisfied. She has always known she was born to live among gold and luxury, and Jaime has finally chosen. Chosen her. 

A moan from the bed claims Cersei’s attention.

In the morning light, the white of the crumpled sheet contrasting with her olive skin, Taena is a nice, pleasant doll of flesh and lust.

“Why all these luggages, Cersei?”, the woman says, arching her dark brows. “Are you going to leave?”

“No, I simply like waking at dawn to arrange my stuff into trunks, miss Perspicacity.”

The woman climbs off the bed, naked, a plea in her black eyes. “Let me come with you.”

“How about that little rose of yours?”

“Who? Margaery? I barely recall her name, since the last night.”

Cersei snorts, regretful. She should have known how it works with stray cats, you give them a cup of milk, a good shag and they follow you everywhere.

“Sour grapes, as the fox said when he could not reach them,” the golden artist comments from the chaise, putting on her new black leather boots.

“The fact that little cunt of Margaery has fled with Bronn Blackwater is totally meaningless, to me,” Taena replies, frowning. She’s prettier when she frowns. “And I’m sure she’ll repent she has chosen such a criminal, a pyromaniac.”

“Well, Bronn is a walking shit, that’s sure, but he has nothing to do with the arson of the Ned’s House, or with the ambush to Robb Stark.” 

Still scowling, still naked, Taena crosses her arms, half hiding her generous tits. “I don’t care about who has put that horrible place afire. Bronn’s only a fortune hunter, desiring to put his filthy fingers on Highgarden.”

“Highgarden?”

“Highgarden, yes. The estate of the Tyrells, Margaery’s extremely rich family, in the south.” Cersei finds herself enjoying the evil grin shining now on the other woman’s face. “As if Margaery’s granny and her older brother will ever consent to it.”

“Has she got a brother?”, Cersei asks, innocently.

“Three”, sighs Taena, reaching out for one of Cersei’s gowns. “The youngest one is pretty but… you know, he’s one of those who prefer uncooked celeries to hot potatoes. The second is strong but awfully in love with his colorless wife. The eldest, well, he’s good looking, but a cripple.”

“An extremely rich cripple, though.”

“An extremely clever cripple. Willas is the male version of his grand-mother, trust me. Can you help me with these laces, please?” Taena has a soft way to say please, and her hair is even softer. Wavy, but not too much wavy, and Cersei’s dress fits her very well, so the magnanimous lady of the Golden Hand doesn’t tear it off from her for her insolence. Cersei appreciates a bit of insolence from time to time, she liked the way Taena has dragged her to the floor, during the saloon brawl. She liked it very much. “Thanks, Cersei, my gem. By the way, if Bronn is innocent, who’s the guilty?”

“Mr. Spicer.” The name means nothing to Taena, obviously. “The owner of the grocery shop, and the uncle of Jeyne Westerling, the insipid girl who’s engaged to Robb Stark.”

“Another good match dramatically wasted.”

Cersei agrees, nodding with such conviction that a daring curl escapes from her hairnet. Taena is quick to help her fixing it. “The absurd thing is that Spicer meant to get the saloon, actually.”

“The saloon? Why has he tried to murder Stark and destroy his business, then?”

“Because he believed himself very smart.” A slight nausea engulfs Cersei at the idea, lately she has grown very sick of middle-aged men who think themselves the Warrior made flesh but who are actually less charming than a dull pepperpot. “So, he tried to get rid of competitors and put the blame on Jaime, smartly forgetting that I exist. Yes, I do exist and I’ve always known Bronn would have surely send Stark to the grave with just one shoot, and that he’d have never dared to light a fire in the Hound’s city. Bronn cares about his life.”

“Who’s the Hound?”

“Our _beloved_ brother Sandor was once the Hound, a famous gunslinger and bounty hunter, with a certain repulsion for fires.”

“I suppose Mr. Spicer’s night has been very long, then.”

“He has been lucky, in the end. He lost just a few teeth, and a few clothes.” Cersei can’t help but laugh at the idea of the ambitious Rolph Spicer being paraded to the jail, in all his miserable nudity. “You know, they had to check if he showed the wounds that Jaime had inflicted on him with his six-shooter when the scum was fleeing from the saloon, after having hit Stark.”

Taena sneers, too, proving to have sense of humor. “Oh, Cersei, you’re so brilliant, and gorgeous. You make every dress you wear a marvel… Let me come with you, I beg you.”

The dark-haired woman is also clever. Cersei’s dress is just a travel dress, a plain green wool gown embroidered with spider webs on the bodice and lower skirt - the webs of the skirt entrapping huge, beaded butterflies. And the hat has a few black feathers and an onyx cameo as its only ornament – it’s Cersei’s inner glamour that enlightens the simple clothe, as usual.

She makes one of her pouty, annoyed faces. “If the boss will say yes…”

The boss doesn’t say yes, he says nothing at all, but Taena takes it for a silent approbation. Gods be good, Jaime Lannister seems the shadow of his own self. Completely absent. 

“Believe me, boss, after this town, the Rock will be a pleasure.” Cersei tries, rolling her eyes when the expression on Jaime’s handsome face darkens even more. She really can’t stand sullen people - luckily the dark-haired woman she has chosen to bring with her at the Rock is showing another, totally different, attitude. She helps the glowing girl climbing the train, her fingers indulging on her soft curves. “Do you want some sugar candies, tarty Taena?”

“No, thank you cherry Cersei”, the woman answers, the wickest of the smiles curving her full lips. “I’ll see you on the train.”

“ _All aboard!_ ” shouts the stationmaster, and Jaime jerks on his feet, white like a Septa’s veil.

“Where are you going, boss?”

“I don’t know it, me neither”, he replies, but his feet are clearly moving, and he’s leaving the running board of the wagon - he’s truly leaving the train.

Cersei clings on his arm. “Well, come on inside”, she says, offering her brightest, most captivating smile.

“Leave me alone, Cersei, I’ve got to think.”

“You can think inside the train”, she spats, realizing from how Jaime’s eyes are far and sparkling that’s a futile attempt. She has lost. Lost to an ungainly, hideous girl with feet as large as a fucking locomotive.

“I’m sorry, Cersei…”, he jumps down the wagon when the train is beginning to move, “…but I’m afraid my travelling days are over.” She looks down at him, at the folder full of papers and at the huge amount of money he’s leaning towards her. “Divvy this up with the girls and say goodbye to them for me. The Rock is yours, since you want it so badly.”

She grasps the money, she grasps the documents, her hands trembling. The Rock is hers - Cersei of Casterly Rock, she will have this name written on all the glittering posters and with this name she will be remembered, till the end of time. The West, the true West is hers and she’ll make it a dream factory, _the_ dream factory. Steam, there’s a lot of steam, damping her cheeks, threatening to ruin her make-up and change her into a grotesque creature. It’s curious, in the steam clouds, Jaime looks even more beautiful than usual but a bit too old for Cersei. Once, he has joked about the fact they were born the same day and she has thought it to be sign, but she has been blatantly wrong. There’s a hint of silver in Jaime’s mane, he’s thirty-five years old for Gods’ sake while Cersei is maximum twenty-five like Taene, no, twenty-two, she decides, like that pretty tiny thing called Margaery Tyrell.

“All right”, the beauty of beauties says, clutching her treasure to her breast. “Stay in Silverhill. And thanks, Jaime.”

“Thanks for nothing, Cersei”, he sneers, becoming more and more little. “You deserved the Rock, now tear it up!”

Yes, she deserves it, she deserves to be powerful and rich - and even happy, maybe, but happiness comes after power and wealth, only dumb people think otherwise.

 _Goodbye, golden fool of mine,_ Cersei silently says to the sky, coming back to the wagon where Taena is waiting for her.

“Hey, Cersei, what’s going on?”

“Call me boss, now.” Cersei replies, arranging the folds of her sumptuous travel dress, being not intentioned to arrive to the Rock all crumpled and untidy.

“Boss? What happened to Mr. Lannister?” 

“I gave him his walking papers,” she explains.

“Cer…, well, boss, do you mean what you’re saying?”

“Every word of it, Taena. I’ll buy Lannisport and put it around your wrist like a bracelet.” The dark-eyed woman cackles, her hands clapping in delight when she notices the dragons in Cersei’s lap. “I’ll put it in your hair like a crown, you’ll be the queen, and I, I’ll be the empress, the only true monarch of the new Frontier.”

“Oh, boss! You must tell the other girls.”

“Must?”

“Should, you should… it’s you to decide, your grace.” Taena’s smart, and truly talented with her tongue.

“Yeah, I should”, Cersei states, trying to ignore the heat coming from her loins at the sight of the wicked woman’s soft hills of pleasure, raising and lowering with short, excited breaths - keeping her usual, royal composure can be hard, sometimes. “Summon them, all. Please”, she adds, graciously. “I’ve got a present for the girls.”

The girls have a present for Cersei, in truth. A six, almost seven, feet of present, dressed with a costly gown but still absurdly covered with a flock of freckles.

“Hello, miss Cersei,” the freckles bearer says, shyly.

“Hi, Brienne.”

“I bet we’re going 40 miles an hour, now.” The huge, shambling girl darts her eyes at the prairie, out of the window. Her eyes are really big, too big. Exaggerated. “We’re getting further and further away from Silverhill.”

“Yes, I think so. We should be at the Rock in less than a blink of eye. Are you planning to stop there, by the way?”

“I’ll stop there…”, the girl swallows, her voice becoming suddenly very weak, “…if he does.”

“He? Who?”

The waitress swallows again, harder. “Jaime Lannister.”

“I see”, she replies, intrigued, letting her emerald eyes linger of the longest legs of all Westeros. An attraction, in a way, if one wants really to be charitable as the Seven-Pointed-Star demands. “And what are you planning to do at the Rock? Wait on tables?”

“Well, I don’t know, but I will, if he wants me to.” “Look, would you accept an apology, miss Cersei? I swear you, I never meant to be that way, but I’m afraid I can have acted like a snob when I came in the saloon, the first time. I-I’m sorry, truly sorry, the fact is I come from a… rock lost in the Narrow Sea and I had my head full of nonsense… about so many things”, Brienne sighs, her eyes so damned blue. “After all, it’s only a matter of style, isn’t it? I mean, some people wear one of dress… other people wear another.” She looks outside, again, her skin aflame as if she has just said a monstrosity and not one of the cleverest thing Cersei has ever heard. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s good for the men to have a little entertainment.”

“You mean you want to join us girls?”, Cersei says, word by word, slowly. It’s an incredibly foolish idea, and yet. Those legs, that ass, those eyes of hers, are worth a pot of gold. A hundred pots of gold, with Cersei’s philanthropic assistance and guide.

“I’d like to try, if it’s… necessary.”

“You’d do it for him, not for yourself.”

“Well, that’s what he wants, isn’t it?”, the incredibly stupid cow bleats, and the sun pierces the glass and hits Cersei like a lightening, forcing her to close her eyelids. Sometimes, light is too violent, too pure. 

That’s not really happening, she’s not going to do what she’s going to do.

And yet.

 _Fuck those damned eyes of hers_ , Cersei mentally swore, going on her feet, and starting to yank and push the tall, mannish, unbearable girl towards the train end.

“What? Why?”, the cow complains.

“You’re getting off this train”, Cersei replies, dryly, pulling the emergency brake.

“No, please, no”, the beast begs, her voice being almost entirely covered by the iron shriek of the train arresting itself. “I don’t want to get off, I’ll go where he goes.”

“Ok, Brienne.” Cersei allows, staring at her biceps. Gods, if she’s big. “I’m surely not strong enough to force you outside and I surely don’t want to be liable of your unhappiness. We have the right of pursuing happiness, haven’t we, little sister?”

The beast beams, literally beams in the sunlight, and for a moment, she’s so relaxed, full of trust, caressed by the golden rays, well, in this light she could almost be a beauty. An impossibly stupid beauty.

Taking advantage of the tall girl’s looseness, Cersei shoves her with all the force of her delicate frame, smiling a bitter smile as she watches a hundred pots of gold falling, rolling, scattering themselves on the dusty ground. The train begins again moving, and the giantess is brave enough to limp behind it for a while, under Cersei’s amused eyes.

“Why, boss?” Taena says, reaching her. “Why have you sent her back? She’s a nice girl, in the end.”

“That’s the point, Taena, she’s not that bad, in the end. As my benefactress used to say, a good apple spoils the whole lot, but I suppose we can keep in touch, if you like her so much.” Cersei replies, condescendingly.

Letters are harmless, more or less.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No GIFs for this chapter... just a bit of privacy, and fluff, for two idiots in love. Hope you enjoy

A stain against a rock, at the beginning, with the shape of a girl - the girl he’s looking for. She raises on her feet as quick as a fox, and struggles to wipe the tears when she notices him arriving, but it’s late and Jaime has already seen them.

If he were a better man, he would cringe at the sight of her tears, but he’s not a good man, so his heart fills with a subtle joy than someone might exchange for hope. If the dumb girl cries, maybe she’s crying for someone and maybe that someone’s prettier and cleverer than a Mr. White or Brown or Grey or whatsoever. Who knows, maybe that someone is Jaime, coincidentally.

“Good morning, miss,” he jabbers, any sound he makes coming out muffled and weird, having him forgotten to wag the kerchief from the face. He takes it off, hastily, and dismounts, very confused about how to go on – he has no clue of what he planned to tell her, now. Well, to be honest, Jaime didn’t plan a damn thing, he just took one of the best uppercuts of his life from that beast of man, passed his tongue on his split lip to taste a bit of blood and treasured any fucking word Brienne’s father said, because they made sense.

“You’re hurt,” she says, her thumb trailing from his jaw to the corner of his mouth, where it halts, and flutters for a second, like the wings of a butterfly or like her eyelashes, so thin and pale, yet so long at such a short distance. “Who did it to you?”

“Addam”, he lies, his apple going up and down, like a crazy squirrel running on a trunk. It’s not easy to speak frankly and tell a wench that her father is a fucking brute, when the aforesaid wench is the one for whom you would make 4000 miles and even more, if necessary. “We like boxing, from time to time. Once I broke two of his ribs”, Jaime adds, to cover a lie with a truth. It’s not a brilliant idea, judging from her immediate reaction of alarm. “Only once. And accidentally.” 

“Uh.” Sometimes, she’s really too talkative for Jaime’s endurance ability.

“Ok, now it’s time to come back Silverhill. I promised your father to bring you back as soon as possible.” This time he’s not lying, he’s just not telling all the tale. He promised more than this, he promised to the man and to himself to tell her everything – and to use those words. The big ones. He takes his hat in his hand, and smiles, tentatively, as Brienne shifts her weight from a foot to another. He’s going well, and he’s beginning to be confident that he will find the right moment to spit those damned words on their way back, when she’ll grip to his waist… their hearts beating at the same time, the valley appearing suddenly from behind a hill in all its beauty.

“I’m not coming back to my father.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” 

“My ears legitimately refuse to listen to such a…”, Jaime bites his tongue before becoming too explicit. “Come on, wench, what the hell are you going to do here all by yourself?”

“Dunno, but I’m not going back, not with you.” She points out and starts walking, and it’s only then that Jaime realizes she’s limping. Her gown is all teared off on the right, and there’s dried blood on the tissue, too.

“For Gods’ sake, Brienne, what…”

“Just a few scratches. Cersei threw me off the train, after having pulled the manual brake,” she explains, obstinately going on waddling on the dust. “It was kind from her, kind but pointless. You make it always pointless.”

Even Bear protests with a stunned neigh to such an incredibly unfounded accusation. “Oh, no. It’s not me who’s too blind and stupid not to see what anyone else see, at the very first glance.” He retaliates, turning on like a match at the obviousness of the thing.

Because it’s obvious.

Addam knows it.

Sumner Crakehall knows it.

Half Silverhill knows it, even her father does, by now.

 _You love her_ , Brienne’s father has stated no more than a couple of hours before, and with that big head of his, he can’t be a genius, what the fuck. _Go get her, idiot of a westerman and let’s hope your children will take from their mother_ , the white-whiskered giant has then added - so peremptorily that Jaime’s heart has threatened to explode, turning him into an awful corpse with a very big hole in the upper part of his chest.

And for what? For who? For a wench who enjoys knitting her brows like other more reasonable women enjoy knitting scarves. Even now Brienne’s frowning, even now that he’s pouring his soul at her monstrous feet.

“You’re really unbearable, Brienne”, he groans, going to his knees. “Marry me.”

“You find it funny, do you?”

“Funny? Oh, look, this is precisely my definition of fun, staying here in the dust, waiting for you to understand the difference between a prank and a serious proposal.”

Red as a cherry, the wench helps him getting on his feet, rubbing his trousers to get rid of the dirt. “Not that you helped me a lot in understanding, not when you fill a dozen letters with jokes and then…”

“The letters weren’t a joke, Brienne. Please stop caring about the dust and start caring about what I’m saying.” She startles, but she leaves her hands in Jaime’s, when he finally manages to grab them. “I remember all the letters by heart, word for word, yours and mine. If you want, if you’re still sorry that they’ve been destroyed in the fire, then I’ll write them again, and write some letters more. Signing them, this time. Only if it doesn’t bother you, if you’d like me to do it, if you…”

“I was on that train, for you, and you… why weren’t you aboard?”

She can be so annoying, but, maybe, now that she has lifted his right hands to her lips to kiss his knuckles, he’s propending to forgive her.

“You want me to say the words, Brienne,” he replies, half happy, half terrified. The knot is still there, impeding his tongue to work as it should. Even her kiss, the light way in which she brushes his lips, leaving Jaime’s throat unbearably parched – well, it doesn’t help. Sweetness is overwhelming when you’re not used to it and when you’re afraid of messing up everything, again, by kissing her back too hungrily or saying _I love you_ with the wrong tone or…

“Not necessarily, Jaime. You could write them,” she hints at smiling, the sun glowing across her hair of white gold.

He nods, bringing slowly her hands around his waist and his back, because he needs Brienne to be his second skin, he wants to see the world through the orange, translucent screen of his eyelids closing against the smoothness of her neck, he wants to drown in the smell of sweat and earth raising from her breast, he wants to feel every one of the crooked but kind details she’s made of, and chisel them in his mind.

He wants to shape a new memory, a million new memories having her face, her voice, her warmth, her gentleness and he promises himself to stay awake every night for the rest of their life, just to look at her sleeping naked and slick with his sweat, keeping vigil, their legs entangled under the sheet, not to miss a fucking single thing of her, not when she’ll finally be his, and he’ll be hers, forever. Because she has said yes – yes, to him – and that’s all that count, all that Jaime has ever desired.

Along with a bunch of blue-eyed brats and a cabin, in a valley, where the sun dies and rebirths every day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now... the epilogue


	19. Epilogue

"Brienne?" She tilts her head, and sees a gorgeous girl, in a flamant red dress, smiling at her. "I'm Sansa Lannistark."

Sansa, her good-sister. Well, not yet. Brienne's feet are suddenly so cold.

"Nervous, Brie? Can I call you Brie? We're going to be soon sisters, in the end."

Brienne nods. Sisters is sweet, surely better than good-sisters. "I love your dress, Sansa", she says and blushes.

"Oh, just a rag Tyrion bought me in Myr. And yours? Where's your wedding dress? I'm here to help you dressing, if you'd like it." The blue-eyed girl chuckles, thrilled. "Don't say no, please, Brienne. I lost Robb's wedding, and even my childhood friend, Jeyne Poole, didn't wait for my honeymoon to end, to marry Theon. You know, Arya, my only sister, will never say yes to poor Gendry-boy, so you're my last chance to be the best bridesmaid ever."

Bridesmaid. A bridesmaid assists a bride, normally. A lovely bride, not a huge, dancing bear.

"Brie? Brie? Are you still here?"

Someone pushes in her hand something and orders her to drink. She obeys, and recognizes it, immediately.

Wildfire.

Sansa has frequented Margaery's same kind of school, maybe.

"Thanks, Sansa", Brienne says, coming back to the room where she's supposed to preapre herself for the ceremony, the same chamber where she changed herself, that day Jaime kissed her under the oak.

The day she saw a lion, too. Jaime teases her every blessed time she tells him about the lion, but it's ok, she loves when he plays the stupid, rolling his green eyes and teasing her, she loves when he starts guffawing like a child then kisses her and calls her 'wench'. He can be such a dumb, sometimes. Luckily Brienne was present when old Sumner urged Jaime to shave and cut his hair short for the marriage, or Jaime would have followed the rancher to the barber shop and lost his wild westerland look, like poor Strongboar did. Megga was a bit perplexed by Lyle's sudden change, who made him look like a younger copy of his grand-father, but she married him anyway, in the end. They were both so lovely, that day, and Jaime lost his bet with Addam. 

Old Sumner sang and drank during all the wedding feast, he never cried, not even a tear, and it was only Addam to weep, a lot, when Elinor Tyrell refused his proposal and accepted Mr. Ambrose's one, instead, that same night. A half tragedy - until the train brought other girls for the Ned's House and Addam consoled himself with a young widow, Mrs. Sarella Watson a dark-haired, strong-willed, pretty girl. And a very good shooter, too.

Sansa begins to show evident signs of impatience. "Oh, Brienne, darling, it's up to me and Tyrion to be grateful. I know it's you who insisted with Jaime, and granted our presence here. Now the dress, time's running." She claps her small, gloved hands, with expectation and Brienne swallows, twice.

"I'm not going to wear a _proper_ wedding dress, Sansa."

It's simple, Satin has been too busy, with Jeyne's Poole dress, then with Megga's, then with her own wedding dress, so Brienne just thought that the lovely blue trousers sewed by her closest friend may fit, along with one of Jaime's shirt, for a modest marriage, celebrated outside, on the hill before Jaime's house, dominating the valley. _Our valley, our house, oaf of a wench,_ Jaime likes to claim, when he curls against her, in one of the big rocking chaises of the newly built porch.

"No dress?" Sansa looks stunned and horrified at the same time. The girl makes a loud, but still very lady-ish, sigh, then recuperates her sparkling smile. "Don't worry, Brie, I have something, here, in my bag, a gift, for you." Sansa shows her a ribbon, no, a hair-net, or something similar. "I intended to give it to you only after the ceremony, but this way it's even better. I won't let you marching towards the altar with only flowers in your hair, like in times of old."

Brienne opens her mouth to replicate, to tell her that a sapphire tiara is too precious as a gift, but she decides to close it and accept the gift, as she has accepted the flowers that Pod and Alla have picked up in the early morning - buttercups, forget-me-not and crimson snapdragons. Jaime will find it funny, to see her combed that way, flowers and gems on her straw head. She smiles, as she always does when she thinks about Jaime and Sansa guesses her thoughts.

"You're deeply in love with him, aren't you?", her new sister asks, and Brienne's eyes answer in her place. "Oh, Gods be good, these Lannister have something special, I'd say. Something very hidden under layers and layer of bitchiness, but they're good about certain matters. Abed, for instance."

Brienne goes so wildly red, that she must look as a poppy, now. A burning poppy.

"Good heavens, Brie, they invented the train, the telegraph! In modern, civilized times a girl can't be that crazy to marry a man, without having checked if he's good enough... but, sure, Jaime's the brother of Tyrion, in the end, so you're certainly safe. Come on, stop trembling, Jaime and brother Sandor are waiting for you under that great oak. Oh Gods, how Sandor is incredibly attractive in a roughspun robe! Don't tell, Tyrion, my husband's still so jealous of Sandor, who knows why. I dated Sandor just a couple of times, 'cause I liked him being so rugged, but he's such a poor speaker, while Tyrion is so smart, so funny, so talented. A pity that Ty is still so poor-confident about his look, as if the way you look might have some relevance. Brie?"

Brienne can't understand how Jaime's twin can be uncomfortable about his look. Jaime is so... beautiful, even Sansa is really pretty and feminine. Brienne isn't.

"Come on, Brienne. I can't give you a sip of wildfire every time you have a panic attack. Inhale, exhale, and just think that it's going to be a perfect day. Do you trust Jaime, don't you?"

"I do." She does, she trusts Jaime with all her heart.

"You're right about Jaime, he'll never jilt you at the altar like that scum of Bronn did to Margaery Tyrell when he understood he would never become the owner of the Highgarden Estate, not with Margaery's brothers ready to shoot him at the first _faux pas_."

"What?"

"Margaery Tyrell. They say she fainted at the news, and that her father had almost a heart attack. The man's quite fat, however, and his mother and his wife use knifes instead of words to communicate, so, maybe it was merely domestic stress."

"I had no idea. Poor, poor Margaery, but now she's well, I guess. Cersei wrote me, from the Rock. Margaery has joined her and Taena, to help them in the school they've founded with the money Jaime gave them."

"A school? Are we talking of the same Cersei?" Sansa's voice is quite incredulous.

"Yes, a school, an academy for young, talented girls", Brienne replies. "Margaery and Taena are so satisfied about it, according to Cersei's letters."

"It seems they're having such a great time, and success, too. Cersei wrote me that she, Taena and Margaery have reached an unexpected, pleasant level of closeness. She used the term intimacy in her letter, so they must dwell very well together, I suppose." Sansa's smile widens and widens - she's such a kind girl, to be so happy for people she barely knows. "Cersei says she has cut her hair, but, she's surely the same beauty as ever, and she has proved to be a very dedicate teacher."

"Cersei Lann, a teacher, you do say."

"Yes, she teaches piano...

...and astronomy."

Brienne can't help but smiles, thinking to the small school they've just finished to built, all together, the Emerald Lake School. She will never be such a good and determinate teacher like Cersei or Margaery, but for Silverhill it's a step, a step in the good direction.

"Cersei added that they have scouted a girl who's extremely gifted, about music and many other matters", she goes on, "a bright-haired girl who's going, in a few years, to show to all women in Westeros how they can get their own independence. Independence is fundamental, in Cersei's philosophy."

"Cersei's _philosophy._ I can imagine her personal _motto_ ", Sansa replies. 

"Now, stop babbling and get up, Brie. Jaime's waiting."

It's true, amazingly true.

Jaime's waiting for her on the lawn, with the jacket still on his shoulders, in the cool breeze of the morning. Brienne doesn't care if the jacket is elegant or not, she can see only Jaime among all the people, their kin and friends, and she's no more afraid, now that he turns and looks at her, as if she were the most beautiful woman on earth.

He's not the cleverest of Lannisters, probably, but he loves her and she loves him, she loves the way he nods to her father before taking her hand in his, the way he pulls out the jacket to wrap it gingerly around her shoulders.

"To protect you, Brienne, from the wind, the way you protect me from myself", he whispers to her, leaning to kiss her, but brother Sandor smacks at his nape, her father coughs, and Addam starts laughing, then goes on weeping, softy, moved, soon followed by Jon and by a very short man who has to borrows Pod's handkerchief. One of the Starks, probably, since he's dark-haired and he's standing at Sansa's side.

Overwhelmed by the what she sees in Jaime's green eyes, Brienne has a hard time in listening to the holy brother's reading, and even the groom is a bit distracted, so distracted that brother Sandor has to tug at one of his sleeves to get his attention.

“Now you should do that, Lannister, I mean, the kiss, and try not do be indecent in front of children, for the Mother's sake”, he growls.

Brienne feels so good that she anticipates Jaime and kisses him. A peck, no more, but they have time, they have all the time they want, now.

“With this kiss, I pledge my love, and take you for my lord and husband", the words pour out her mouth naturally, like the quiet flowing of a river to the sea. 

"With this kiss I pledge my love," Jaime replies, hoarsely, "and take you for my lady and wife."

Brother Sandor grunts, satisfied, and raises a big crystal high, so the rainbow falls down upon them. "Here in sight of gods and men," he says," I solemnly proclaim Jaime Lannister and Brienne Tarth to be man and wife, one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, and cursed be the one who comes between them." 

He darts his dark eyes on the crowd, threatening, but there's only a prairie of smiles around them, and - when her father chokes Jaime in a hug and old Sumner begins singing 'The Bear and the Maiden Fair' with Tyrion, _because the short man kissing passionately Sansa can't be anyone but Jaime's twin_ \- Brienne's so happy that she can't know the best has still to come.

It's again Jaime, her Jaime, Mr. Jaime Lannistarth now, who shows her.

When the stars take the place of their guests, they kiss, and laugh together about the horrid tea set Septa Roelle has gifted them and kiss again, saying all sort of stupid things, and her husband caresses her until she yields and and accepts to lay down, whimpering, on their huge bed... and he kisses her again, but not exactly on her lips - not that she wants to complain, it's only... unexpected, but good, it's a song kiss, and Brienne, well, feels a bit like a hairy bear but she's incredibly glad to understand how lovely, gay and lusty certain songs can be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank to sweet Marylin for having played the role of Cersei's promising pupil... thank to you all for having followed me for twenty chapters of Glitters, Guns and GIFs. I had so much fun in writing this fic,  
> I hope of having been able to spread that fun, a bit, at least.  
> Have a nice weekend, wherever you are, and take care!


	20. End credits

One last thing: the **Harvey Girls** did really exist! Less frou-frou than the Tyrell bunch, and surely hard workers, like Brienne and any true pioneer :) 

**I want to thank those little great women and, with them, to thank all women and workers who are often forgotten by big History,** until a movie apparently "shallow" doesn't remember them, **and thank again to you all** for the time you have kindly dedicated to the **Ned's Girls** , and **thank to all the actresses and actors who have gently "cooperated** " and took part to this wonderful

**CAST**

Miss Brienne Tarth - **Sharon Stone**

Mr. Jaime Lannister - **Brad Pitt**

***

Miss Margaery Tyrell - **Judy Garland**

Mr. Bronn Blackwater - **John Hodiak**

***

Miss. Satin Flowers - **Ezra Miller**

Mr. Jon Snow - **Kit Harington**

***

Miss Jeyne Westerling - **Oona Chaplin**

Mr. Robb Stark - **Richard Madden**

***

Special mention to:

Mr. Addam Marbrand - **Benedict Cumberbatch**

****

Mr. Sumner Crakehall & Lyle Crakehall - **John Wayne**

****

Mr. Podrick Payne - Robert Sheenhan

***

For the first time in fanfiction: 

Grey Wind - **Anon Cute Wolf**

The Snake - **Anon Adorable Snake**

The Puzzled Lion Prairie - **Pikachu in his Prairie Dog Uniform**

The MGM Lion - **Leo the MGM Lion**

*** _NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS FIC*_**

_(Except Rolph Spicer), but honestly who cares about Rolph Spicer?)_

***

**And with the special, very special, appearance of the Academy Award Winner:**

** DAME ANGELA LANSBURY  **

as **Lady Cersei** of Casterly Rock

****

_**Good 25th Birthday Angela and Thank You** _


End file.
